


Final Conquest

by The_WiP_Hand



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Asphyxiation, Bondage, Dominance, Dubious Consent, Elves, F/F, Female-Centric, Femdom, Femslash, Finger Sucking, Fingerfucking, Forced Orgasm, Forced Relationship, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, Inappropriate Use of a Greatsword, Interspecies Sex, Lesbian Sex, Masochism, Master/Slave, Military, Mistress/female slave - Freeform, Non-Consensual Bondage, Orc/Elf - Freeform, Orcs, POV Lesbian Character, Porn With Plot, Prisoner of War, Rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sadism, Scissoring, Sexual Slavery, Slow Burn, Spanking, Topping, War, Whipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:54:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 63,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24387019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_WiP_Hand/pseuds/The_WiP_Hand
Summary: In all her years at war, General Roga has never taken a captured prize to her bed. But when she meets a particularly ferocious elf on the battlefield, Roga is consumed with a desire to keep her alive - if only to break her.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Roga/Elyon
Comments: 181
Kudos: 596





	1. A Healthy Fear of Elves

**Author's Note:**

> Behold what happens while I’m trapped in quarantine avoiding my real responsibilities!
> 
> Obligatory disclaimer: this isn't beta'd or even very proofread. I'm sure there are mistakes.
> 
> The orcs here aren't the traditional 100%-evil unwashed brutes of ye olde fantasy. They're really just 6-8 foot tall strong bois with big muscles, tusks, and the moral ambiguity of warlike humans.

“It’s just a few elves.”

“Who know the terrain far better than we do,” Roga said, lashing her rhino’s lead to a sturdy oak, "and this is from an orc who's been fighting campaigns in the woods for the past eight years. We wait here.”

“We almost have them!” Kordath protested in frustration. “And you want us to _wait?”_

“Yes,” Roga said shortly. She understood that warlords liked to send their sons and daughters to hold ranked positions on the front to fast-track their military education—it was how Roga herself had gotten her start—but she hated being saddled with the arrogant little pricks. And at her most naïve, she was certain she had never been as loudly slow-witted as Kordath.

Roga’s favored lieutenant, Magdur, explained more patiently, “The elves know they’re hemmed in by a thousand orcs on the other side of the forest. The Silver Arrow is _hoping_ we’ll follow them into the ravine, where they’ll have the advantage of closed space and heavy growth. But as soon as Sylvendra realizes we’re wise to the trap, she’ll come for us.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“They have no supplies in that ravine and no means to get any. Sylvendra will want to fight now, while her troops are still fresh. And trust me, you’ll be glad to have that fight here instead of a narrow ravine.”

“I just don’t understand what we have to fear from such small weak creatures,” Kordath said. “General Zardek had no trouble putting down two thousand of them in the south.”

“General Zardek is _smart,”_ Roga snapped wearily, and she doubted there had been ‘no trouble.’

There was a reason these woods had resisted orc dominance for so long. A warlord couldn’t just blunder in, counting on brute strength for victory. The elves here were seasoned orc killers, masters of guerilla warfare and, though they couldn’t match orcs for strength in the open field, Roga had found them to be ruthless, lightning fast, and far scrappier than the capital’s propaganda suggested. Kordath spoke with the misplaced assurance of someone who had grown up on nothing but that propaganda.

“How hard can it be to subdue creatures who are servile by nature?”

“They’re not servile by nature,” Roga said. “No creature is that’s lived this long in the world. You think of them as ‘servile’ and you’re a dead orc.”

Kordath scoffed, still incredulous, but Roga knew more of the Deep Woods than he did, and in an hour, her prediction had come to fruition.

Poor Kordath died, bellowing in pain, with an elf’s dagger buried to the hilt in his eye socket.

It was never easy to watch her warriors fall—even the incredibly foolish ones—but amid the cacophony of battle, Roga fortified herself with the knowledge that she had made the casualties as few as possible. Had she pushed southeast into the ravine as Kordath suggested, or southwest into the denser woods, the elves would have slaughtered them all. As it was, fighting on even ground through the sparse trees, the battle was brutal.

The elves had descended at dusk, racing in from all sides on near-soundless feet. The encampment Roga had chosen lacked a dense canopy, robbing them of their usual strategy of dropping from above, but the little fuckers still did an irritatingly good job breaking up the orcs.

A silver-haired elf charged Roga and she struck out with her axe. His legs thudded to the leaf-litter several feet from his torso. At some point an arrow had lodged in Roga’s calf, sending a keening pain up her leg. She snapped off the fletching and let the pain fuel her battle high as she bellowed, “Stay together!”

As if to spite her, a woolly rhino, loosed from its tethers, thundered past her and through a nearby tree. Roga had deliberately had the rhinos tethered separately to guard against the elves’ usual strategy of stampeding them to break their enemy’s lines and create chaos.

Elves could overcome their size deficit by separating an orc from the ranks and—well, here were an unfortunate few of them trying it now. Three of the silver-armored warriors closed on Roga at once. A cute little brunette with a sword on her right, a redhead Roga recognized as the elf who had killed Kordath on her left, and spearman at her back.

In a single movement, Roga struck the brunette’s adorable little head from her shoulders with her axe and caught the redhead’s throat in her left hand. He choked, stabbing ferociously at Roga with one of his daggers, the blade screeching uselessly against her forearm guard. His next stab may well have landed better but Roga didn’t give him the chance. Instead, she jerked him around with the follow-through of her axe-swing and threw him into the charging spearman. Before they hit the ground, Roga was already turning to punch through the head of yet another attacker.

Shaking blood and brain matter from her hand, Roga took stock of the field and realized that her estimate of seventy elves had been generous. At most, there were fifty to her force of a hundred orcs. Most forces of fifty elves—or fifty anything really—wouldn’t have lasted five minutes against a hundred orcs, but these fought with uncommon savagery. Roga found that creatures often fought better when they were the last thing standing between their species and extinction, and Sylvendra’s force was all that remained of the wood elves’ three armies.

When they fell, the Deep Wood would belong to the orcs.

Roga rode the high of conquest, chopping and striking until the elves thinned and the song of steel gave way to the groans of the dying. The forest floor was littered with the little bodies of elves and a few of Roga’s orcs, but the battle was still alive, single-handedly sustained by the elves’ last general, Elyon Sylvendra.

Roga had caught glimpses of Sylvendra in the past—a glint in the green, a flash of white-gold hair on a clamorous battlefield—but this was the first time she had ever had the chance to really watch the elf fight.

The last general of the Deep Woods stood alone, wielding her infamous greatsword against multiple orcs. Ironically, she was not called the Silver Arrow for her skill in archery. She had gotten the name for the way she struck out with that huge sword—so fast her victims could barely see it. And indeed, when Sylvendra’s blade burst through the back of one of her attackers, Roga with all her combat experience, was hard-pressed to say how it had gotten there.

Then, just as fast, the greatsword ripped from the unfortunate orc’s ribcage, flinging an arc of blood through the night—and Roga was entranced. Sylvendra fought like electrified liquid metal, her silken hair flowing around her like ribbons of moonlight as she cleaved through not one but two of Roga’s best fighters in a single stroke.

“No!” Roga grabbed one of her warriors by the arm before he could start toward the Silver Arrow. “She’s _mine.”_

Roga closed the distance to Sylvendra in hungry strides. As the last wounded orc fell to Sylvendra’s feet, Roga was there, axe raised. Bright silver eyes caught the glint of the axe and Sylvendra’s steel met Roga’s in a crash that left the dusk ringing.

Roga’s blood _thrummed_. She came at Sylvendra with force and speed that left most orcs reeling, but the Silver Arrow took the onslaught in stride, parrying each swing of the axe with poetic precision, her sharp-boned face drawn in concentration. She wheeled out of those parries into strikes so quick that the untrained eye might think them supernatural.

Fortunately, Roga had faced the allegedly supernatural before—wizards, fae, and demons of every flavor—and made them all humble before her. With each stroke and step, Roga worked out the science behind the elf’s seemingly magical swordplay.

The long handle of Sylvendra’s sword allowed her the leverage to wield the blade at terrifying speeds, changing its trajectory on a coin, taking her enemies by complete surprise when they thought they had an opening. It wasn’t magic. It was flawless use of space, leverage, and timing.

When Sylvendra registered that simple speed wasn’t going to land her a killing blow on Roga, she changed tack to a strategy no elf should have the nerve to try. She met one of Roga’s strikes head-on. There was an unbelievable, _exhilarating_ moment in which the elf actually withstood the force of Roga’s downward strike—then a calculated give. Seamlessly shifting her stance, Sylvendra slid the flat her sword down the haft of Roga’s axe so that her blade lodged behind the axe-head.

As soon as their steel locked together, the Silver Arrow _spun_.

Roga was easily five times as strong as the average elf, but in that one spin, Sylvendra brought the strength of her whole body and a monstrous amount of momentum to bear against Roga’s right arm. Roga had never seen such a beautiful disarming maneuver and she knew before the full force went into effect that her fingers were about to be ripped from her axe.

That was just as well; she had grown impatient with the impersonality of the steel between herself and her quicksilver opponent. She wanted to be _closer_ , to pin that liquid lightning beneath her, grasp it, sink her tusks into it…

Letting the axe go, she surged forward.

Having put her whole body into the disarming maneuver, Sylvendra was unprepared for the sudden absence of resistance—and even less prepared for the rush. She spun directly into Roga’s knee, taking the impact full in the chest. Greaves crashed into chest plate and Roga experienced a split second of cruel satisfaction at the shock in those gray eyes before Sylvenra flew backwards. To her credit, the lithe little creature inexplicably managed to roll out of the fall and back onto her feet without losing her grip on her sword. But she was still winded, unbalanced, and Roga was inside her cutting range before she could reassume a proper stance.

One of the orc’s hands gripped Sylvendra beneath the jaw, the other locked around her right wrist, trapping her sword arm. Sliding a leg behind the elf, Roga brought them hip-to-hip and _slammed_ her prey to the ground.

Even as Sylvendra’s greatsword jolted from her grip, her sharp silver eyes never lost their focus. A dagger flashed from a sheath at the elf’s hip, narrowly missing Roga’s windpipe and then tearing a stinging cut across her bicep. Knowing she lacked the precision to catch the Silver Arrow’s arm mid-slash, Roga instead bodily flipped her over, removing her target. With Sylvendra on her belly, Roga planted a knee between those small shoulder blades and cranked the elf’s left arm behind her. Sylvendra twisted, but in the end, she was neither lightning nor liquid—just an animal of flesh and bone, trapped beneath a creature far stronger than herself.

The fight was over.

Roga knew it and she could tell from the airless grunt of pain beneath her knee that Sylvendra knew it too. Still, the stubborn creature didn’t relinquish the knife until Roga put a more powerful hand over hers and forcibly pried her fingers loose.

Roga was not usually one to needlessly torment an enemy—especially one who had fought so well. But as the elf writhed beneath her, Roga was abruptly overcome by the desire to humiliate this one just a little. Casting the dagger aside, she picked up Sylvendra’s greatsword. The finely-crafted weapon that took the elf two hands to wield provided a comfortable one-handed grip for Roga, to whom its weight was negligible.

The moment Roga shifted her weight to straddle Sylvendra, the elf squirmed onto her back and up onto her elbows, ready to scramble backwards—but she froze when the tip of her own sword rested in the hollow of her throat.

Gray eyes went wide and Roga allowed herself a moment of stillness to enjoy the elf’s expression. Roga collected these moments like others collected war trophies—the images of her strongest enemies, realizing their defeat. And Gods, Sylvendra was a perfect picture, her silken hair disheveled from the struggle, her silver eyes raw with rage, pain, and that helpless, angry undercurrent of denial.

Roga pulled the sword back, ready to drive her victory home—

And Sylvendra’s gaze softened with a new emotion. Not sorrow. Not resignation. _Relief_. The Silver Arrow’s eyelids fluttered in a moment of complete vulnerability and her head tilted back ever so slightly, offering her throat.

Something in that moment shifted the world on its axis. And instead of plunging the sword into her prey, Roga dropped it.

Sylvendra blinked in confusion and opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Roga’s fist crashed into her head, knocking her unconscious. The elf fell back on the leaves in a final clatter of armor, and Roga was left standing over her motionless conquest, ebbing with the aftershocks of battle high, disoriented by her own actions.

“General,” a voice said and it took Roga a moment to fully register Magdur—now her only remaining lieutenant—at her shoulder. “The elves have been subdued.”

“Yes…” Roga wrenched her gaze from the sprawl of silvery elf at her feet and asked gruffly, “Casualties?”

“Still being counted, General. We’ve also taken some of the surviving elves prisoner—”

“I’ll worry about them after we’ve seen to the dead and wounded.”

“And the Silver Arrow…” Magdur eyed the unconscious elf a Roga’s feet. “Are you going to kill her?”

“No,” Roga said. “This one is mine.”

“Oh—you mean…?” Magdur just caught herself before questioning her general. Roga might respect Mag’s input on matters of strategy but no orc—regardless of rank or favor—got to question her leader’s claim on war prizes. “Of course, General.”

Roga didn’t blame the lieutenant for her surprise. While it was common—expected, even—for warlords to claim slaves from among their conquered foes, Roga never had. Strangely, she had never felt the need until this moment.

Was it because Elyon Sylvendra was the last general of the battlefront where Roga had spent most of her career? Perhaps this was a twisted form of sentimentality Roga was feeling, the desire to take home a memento of her time in the Deep Woods. Then again, she thought of some of the other generals she had defeated on the field—powerful, beautiful, intelligent creatures of varying species—and couldn’t imagine wanting to keep any of them around past the heady moment her axe dropped.

Perhaps it was Sylvendra’s gorgeous swordsmanship that had her intrigued. Perhaps it was that strange moment in which the elf’s defiant ferocity had given way to something soft…

 _Servile by nature,_ Kordath’s voice came back, even as the fool’s body lay cooling with death not far away.

Roga wanted to prod that moment of softness, plumb its depths… Perhaps there was something to the old assumption about elves. Perhaps even the strongest was just waiting for someone to take her by the throat and tame her. Before the species was gone from the world, Roga decided she would find out.

“General?” Mag said and Roga realized she had stood a little too long astride the elf studying the paradoxically delicate and powerful line of that jaw.

“I’m going to go see the rhinos rounded up,” Roga said gruffly and threw a last sidelong nod down at Elyon Sylvendra. “Have that taken to my tent.”


	2. In Cruel Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written quickly and without serious editing, so please forgive any mistakes.

It took three hours to patch up the wounded, load the dead onto the victory pyre, and wrangle the escaped rhinos, by which point Roga had almost burned through her post-battle high. Almost.

“Join us for a drink, General?” Magdur asked as she and Roga embraced roughly in the torchlight of the orc encampment.

“Nah.” Normally, Roga would relish a post-battle drink, followed by a rough wrestle with her warriors, and some even rougher activities with whoever had come the closest to out-grappling her. “Trust me, Mag, we’ll have a proper victory drink tomorrow night, after we’ve chased down the last of Sylvendra’s scouts.”

Tonight, Roga had a more novel source of entertainment waiting for her.

“How’s the elf?”

“Well…” Magdur held up a hand bearing the marks of little elven teeth. “She’s awake.”

“Oh dear,” Roga laughed. “Mag, you should have had the soldiers take care of her.” Wrangling captives wasn’t work for a lieutenant.

Magdur shook her head, not quite returning Roga’s smile. “I saw her on the battlefield. Wanted to make sure she was properly secured.”

“Worried for my safety, were you?”

Roga had meant the question in jest, but there was no appropriate answer to it. To even imply that a military superior needed protection was a grievous insult. Of course, Magdur knew Roga well enough to gauge when she was joking, but the lieutenant cast her green-gold eyes down anyway and said tersely, “Apologies, General.”

She had that look about her, the line between her brows a little too severe, her lower lip pouted slightly around her tusks. She disapproved. Perhaps, she was even a bit jealous—not that it mattered. Much as Roga valued her lieutenant, she was the general at the end of the day and Magdur her subordinate. Roga would do as she liked and Magdur would take it.

“Hey…” Grasping the other orc by the back of the neck, Roga pulled her in so that their foreheads bumped together. “You look like shit, lieutenant.”

“Ma’am,” Magdur acknowledged, at last cracking a small smile.

“Go relax, enjoy a drink for me.” Roga planted a kiss on Magdur’s forehead. “And for the love of Orn, Mag, lighten up.”

“I’ll see what I can do, ma’am.”

“You’re impossible.” Roga punched the other orc in the shoulder, drawing an actual smile from her. “Fuck off and have a good night.”

“Good night, General.”

Roga’s tent stood at the center of the encampment, a dome of red and brown fabric stretched over half-hollowed giant’s ribs. Some generals Roga knew fussed about having their tent tower forebodingly over all others in their encampment, but she had never been one for that sort of wasteful posturing. Her tent was only as broad as it needed to be to house her war room alongside her personal quarters.

The war room, of course, stood dark and empty when Roga entered, lit only by the sliver of lamplight leaking in from her personal chamber. A sketch was half laid out on the table atop the map—Kordath’s idiotic plan for how they might storm the ravine. He never _had_ gotten to explaining how a double-file line with no rhinos was supposed to be defensible before the alarm had sounded.

Even Roga hadn’t been prepared for Sylvendra to attack quite so early, like she hadn’t been prepared for the elven general’s swordplay and—Gods—she was not prepared for the sight that greeted her when she pulled back the canvas to her personal quarters.

The elf lay all but naked at the center of the furs, white-gold hair spilled beneath her like a pool of liquid ore. Elves weren’t big, as a general rule, but Elyon Sylvendra had at least appeared intimidating in her dark steel armor. Stripped of it, she seemed impossibly small. She lifted her head when Roga entered, pointed ears pricked, but that was about all the movement she could manage, bound hand and foot.

Magdur’s impeccable ropework accentuated her lean figure—a better figure than most elves’, Roga decided, noting the way fighter’s muscle formed pleasing curves where so many slaves were flat. A knotted leather gag stretched Sylvendra’s mouth wide and a cloth blindfold covered her eyes. Roga longed to see those eyes again, trace the flashes emotions through them like lightning through storm clouds… But that could wait.

Tonight, she had a specific plan in mind.

Without speaking, she stripped off her armor and changed into the shift she wore to sleep here on the warmer side of the Undarvi mountain range. All the while, she let Sylvendra wait, listening. The elf held herself with the tense stillness of a forest creature—the lion setting her ambush or the deer on the edge of bolting. Of course, all the elf’s keen senses were no use to her here, where she could neither bolt nor attack. All she could do was take what she was given and Roga intended to make that vividly, mortifyingly clear by night’s end.

When Roga came to stand before her captive, Sylvendra seemed to stop breathing. Magdur had taken every precaution in securing their enemy of several years. Her arms were bound tightly behind her, wrist to elbow, her palms facing outward so there was no chance of her deft little fingers getting at the knots. Additional ropework crisscrossed her chest further securing her arms and, Roga couldn’t help but notice, pleasantly framing her small breasts, which were just covered by a strip of fabric. The elf’s nethers were covered by a similarly minimal cloth that seemed to be held in place only by the rope that ran suggestively between her legs before tying snuggly to the restraints around her arms.

Desire tightened between Roga’s own legs and she smiled. Her father had always said that there was a special pleasure in dominating a worthy enemy on all fronts. Until tonight, Roga had only ever considered the two fronts for domination: strategy and combat. She had out-strategized Sylvendra, though the elf had managed to throw a few surprises her way. She had out-dueled her despite her stunning prowess with that greatsword. But among all Roga’s enemies, Sylvendra was the one who had left her wanting more after the moment of victory. A final conquest.

Sylvendra's whole frame went tense as the orc shifted forward and lifted a bare foot, but Roga didn’t stomp with intent to harm. Instead, she gently, firmly, lay her foot on that golden head and pressed down. The elf resisted at first, her head straining back against the pressure, silken hair shifting against the sole of Roga’s foot. But there was nothing to be gained from resisting a foot to the back of the head except a badly strained neck. Sylvendra gave after a moment, her head dropping to the furs beneath Roga’s heel.

So, the elf was pragmatic enough not to hurt herself for no reason—though Roga had gleaned as much from fighting her. A reckless character didn’t take the time to hone swordsmanship that flawless and impenetrable. A little pragmatism was good; a pragmatic creature could be trained. After a moment, Roga took her foot from Sylvendra’s head and gave the prisoner a moment. The elf was audibly trying to moderate her breaths, but they were coming a hair too fast, her soft little chest straining against ropes that only allowed her so much space to expand her lungs.

The split second Roga moved again, Sylvendra’s head jerked back up and Roga patiently applied her foot again. This was not about hurting the elf. She and Sylvendra both knew that she could inflict any physical damage she wanted; that front was won. And there was nothing meaningful in brutalizing an immobilized enemy. There would be a time for pain and punishment later—Roga looked forward to it—but tonight was not about violence. Tonight was about dominance.

The second time Roga removed her foot, Sylvendra’s head stayed down.

_Good girl._

Dropping to a knee over her prize, Roga gripped the fabric covering that little chest and started to tug it free. Immediately, Sylvendra fought, trying to twist away from the offending hand. Frankly, Roga would have been disappointed if the little warrior hadn’t put up a struggle, but she would soon learn better. Roga took the elf by the throat, lifted her partway off the furs and slammed her down on her back. She didn’t relish violence against such an utterly helpless prisoner, but a bit of force was clearly going to be necessary with this one.

The elf grunted, coughed from the shock of the impact, and wheezed to get the breath back into her lungs. Roga took the opportunity while her captive was still half-stunned and yanked the cloth free, baring a quaint little pair of breasts, nipples pebbled in the cool air. There may not have been much to General Sylvendra’s tits, but there was enough there to hold onto—enough to twist, if the elf did something to deserve it. Roga imagined the little breasts would look lovely bruised, bitten, jiggling with the aftershocks of the whip, but that too could wait for another night.

Sylvendra was struggling again, straining to bring her knees up between herself and the orc, though Magdur’s pitiless ropework hadn’t actually left her the mobility to do so. In response, Roga applied a careful amount of pressure to the elf’s throat—not quite enough to really suffocate, just enough to be a threat. Sylvendra took the hint and stilled, tense as a drawn bow.

She was learning.

Carefully, keeping a hand at the elf’s neck to hold her in place, Roga untied the ropes around the captive’s knees and then her ankles. Through the process, Sylvendra was perfectly still. Until her legs were free. Then, like lightning, the Silver Arrow _kicked_ —alright, so she hadn’t completely learned her lesson—and her kicks were nothing to scoff at. Had Sylvendra had the use of her eyes, Roga would have been in danger of a broken tusk, but she easily pinned one leg to the furs with her own more substantial thigh and caught the other beneath the joint of the knee, fingers digging hard into soft flesh.

For a moment, Sylvendra’s left leg fought Roga’s right arm with surprising power, their bodies locking into a stalemate. As Sylvendra grunted with effort, her core contracted, revealing an impressive set of abdominal muscles for such a little thing. _Orn be praised_ , Roga thought as her gaze raked that toned little stomach, no wonder Sylvendra could shift stances and strike with such blinding speed. She had a core of steel.

The elf was trying to lift her hips to a place where she could leverage those impressive stomach muscles against the orc. But with her right leg pinned beneath Roga, it wasn’t possible. Roga allowed the resistance for a few moments longer, admiring the Silver Arrow’s economy of force, even tied up and pinned down in such a helpless position. Then, when she sensed the elf tiring, she adjusted her grip beneath Sylvendra’s left knee and leaned her weight into it.

The prisoner’s breath caught, but there was nothing she could do as the orc bore down on her, opening her legs into a humiliating split. The give was a pleasing surprise—not that Sylvendra didn’t push back with all the strength in those supple thighs, but even for an elf, she was amazingly flexible. Her legs didn’t stop opening until her left knee hit her own shoulder and pressed into it.

It must have been terrifying and mortifying to be spread out this way beneath an enemy, legs wide open and practically bare. But it was only going to get worse from here. Roga’s free hand moved to the strip of cloth over the Silver Arrow’s little quiver. Of course, the resistance resumed with new ferocity when Sylvendra felt a hand groping at the last vestige of her dignity and realized what was about to happen. A roar of protest strained past the gag but the elf was so thoroughly pinned that she could do little more than wriggle as Roga tore the cloth free.

A sound like a sob jerked from elf before she managed to smother it.

Roga paid that no mind as she surveyed her naked prize. Suppressing a chuckle, she ran a hand over the softest little quim she had ever encountered. As rough as Roga liked to play, she did occasionally enjoy a soft thing...

Sylvendra’s frantic efforts to close her legs ironically caused her cunt to flex and twitch against her captor’s touch. And Roga couldn’t help herself anymore; she spread the elf’s labia with two fingers and gently teased the little bud of the clitoris with a third.

“Nnnghh!” was the closest sound Sylvendra could make to a ‘no.’ She was a fool if she expected it to stop her captor, but perhaps it was just an empty denial of the inevitable or a prayer to elven gods who clearly hadn’t been listening for a long time.

Honing in on the elf’s slick pink clitoris, Roga went to work in earnest, with the tender skill of a lover and merciless intensity of a conqueror. This was where Sylvendra started to break. All her concerted attempts at resistance deteriorated into a piteous rolling and jerking of her hips that only served to stimulate her further on her captor’s fingers.

Roga didn’t know infamous Silver Arrow’s sexual history but it was evident from the aborted gasps that she had never been fingered quite like this. The elf’s cheeks had gone pink beneath the blindfold, flushed with struggle and the mounting sensation of a skilled hand on her cunt.

The frantic squirming of her trapped right thigh between Roga’s legs was making the orc’s own cunt flex with desire. In time, Elyon Sylvendra would serve those desires obediently on her knees, but not tonight. Tonight, the elf’s only job—her only option—was to lie back and learn.

↞✶↠

Elyon had been raised for war and all the ugliness that came with it. Since she was old enough to know anything, she had known that she would spend her whole life, however short, fighting orcs. Almost as long, she had known what would happen to her if she was taken alive: torture and rape—either of which would be so brutal she likely wouldn’t survive to see the second. Elyon had made peace with the prospect before leading her soldiers out of the ravine, as she made peace with it before every battle.

This… what the orc was doing with those fingers... had never been part of the plan. Elyon had trained for hot iron to the skin and cudgels to the kneecaps, not these kneading, maddening touches that bordered on worship. She had trained to hold back screams of pain, not the tiny, plaintive whimpers threatening to spill past the gag now. She had steeled herself for every variety of violence… except the non-violent.

When she had thought the orc was about to stomp her skull in, when there had been a hand at her throat, she had been able to accept that. But this flurry of tender touches was torture of a worse kind. This she could not accept, _would_ not accept

—and yet she had no choice.

The orc was so much heavier, so much stronger than Elyon that she could do nothing but lie on her back and take it.

 _The violence will come,_ Elyon told herself, trying to use the chilling thought to cool the mounting heat between her legs. _When they tire of humiliating you, they’ll take your arms and tear them from the sockets. They’ll—_

“Nngh!”

The orc was doing something new with those fingers—rubbing with such intensity that it was practically a vibration, its own frequency, sending Elyon careening off any coherent plane of reality. Need built to a keening crescendo, a stag in full gallop toward the drop. Then, just as Elyon reached the edge, the fingers disappeared.

In an unthinkably humiliating split second, her hips bucked into the absence. She knew her captor had noticed. It would have been impossible not to. She imagined the orc’s leering gaze at her shame and it was injustice of the worst kind that the shame alone didn't kill her where she lay. Eyes squeezed shut behind the blindfold, she prayed in silence for the gods to strike her dead. Let it be over. Whatever this cruel ordeal was supposed to teach her, let it be over. _Please_.

But the gods had done nothing to protect Elyon’s people as they struggled to fight off invasion, as they were slaughtered in droves and forced from their lands into extinction. Why in all the realms would they show mercy now?

Breathless, stunned, and aching with need, Elyon was unprepared for the shift in position. Her captor flipped her over and pulled her into a new hold with the skill of a grappler. Flush against the orc’s chest Elyon felt the curve of breasts large enough to smother her and knew at least why she hadn’t been penetrated. Perhaps that would come later, when this particular humiliation had lost its novelty. Elyon squirmed at the thought but a solid forearm locked across her waist, holding her in place.

After wandering almost reverently over Elyon’s abdominal muscles, the orc’s free hand grasped for her groin, and Elyon pressed her legs closed, determined to resist as long as she was able. But wet heat still pulsed mutinously between her legs and her blindfold was damp with tears from the knowledge that nothing she did now would matter. She had taken her shot at resistance, sword in hand—and she had lost. At the last stand of the elves, she had failed her people. Now, she wasn’t a soldier with the right to fight back against her attackers.

She was their plaything.

Waves of self-loathing crashed through her as a heel dug between her calves, levering them apart. Far stronger legs than her own spread her wide and she bit back a sob. She was exhausted from days of marching without time to hunt sufficient food, from fighting, running, then fighting again. Now this—calloused fingers sliding into her slit, probing the convulsing depths of her shame—and she was out of strength to resist.

The fingers were inside her now, pumping inexorably against her clitoris as the orc’s other hand fondled her breasts. It was too much. She arched against the orc, choking on humiliation, and gave in. The sound she made was wanton and piteous and evidently exactly what her captor had been waiting to hear.

With a few more deft touches, the orc brought her the mercy—and the crushing, mortifying cruelty—of climax.

 _It’s over_ , Elyon’s rapidly splintering voice of reason assured her as she rode out the aftershocks of orgasm on her captor’s hand, her mouth wet and slack around the gag. Now that the orc had won this little power play, she would live up to her species’ reputation and get on with the fatal beating. _Now, the violence. It’s alright, soldier. It will all be over soon._

But the voice of reason could not have been more wrong.

When Elyon’s orgasm was spent, the orc simply gave her head a reassuring pat as if to say _‘good girl,’_ then flipped her over to try a new position.

With her cheek pressed to the furs and her bare breasts crushed beneath her, Elyon let out a ragged sob of denial. Unmoved, the orc settled careful weight across her back, bent one of Elyon’s legs up behind her, and went to work again. Elyon’s flexibility turned out to be a curse, allowing to the orc to fold her backwards into a half crab hold that rendered struggle impossible as those fingers returned to her twitching quim.

Elyon lost track of how many times her worthless body was brought to the edge and then finally to orgasm when she succumbed to whining with need. She only hoped, drowning in sensation, that the orc would kill her once she’d had her fun. Elyon didn’t think she could live with the shame of what had happened here, how she had given way, whimpered in submission, how she had _moaned_ for her conqueror. Who could keep living after that?


	3. Orcsbane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand, two chapters in, our protagonists are going to say words to each other! Probably should have put slow-burn in the tags. Oh well.
> 
> As always, excuse the typos and general unedited-ness.

Elyon woke to the familiar sound of voices outside canvas, a war camp coming alive. A vaguely used feeling between her legs and an explicit lack of feeling in her arms left a dim impression of what had happened the previous night. As her eyes blinked open to an unfamiliar tent, she inhaled and realized she was no longer gagged. Right… there had been a gag, and a blindfold, and—

“Morning, General Sylvendra,” a voice breathed into her hair.

The guttural sound very nearly sent Elyon lunging to escape, but she was still stark naked, weaponless, her arms bound behind her back. There was nowhere for her to go, nothing to do but try to suppress a shudder as an arm snaked around her waist and pulled her close beneath the blankets.

“Did you sleep well?” The orc’s voice was low and husky with the content of a good night’s rest.

Elyon pressed her lips together and gathered her composure. Somewhere between the deft fighter’s holds, she had formed what seemed like a solid theory as to her captor’s identity, but it took her a moment to scrape together enough dignity to make her voice work.

“General Roga…”

“Ah, that’s _Master_ Roga to you.”

“Why?” was the only response Elyon could manage, her throat drawn tight with shame.

 _“Why?”_ The orc had the gall to sound amused. “Because I claimed you as my war prize… which is just a nicer way of saying _slave_.”

Elyon’s insides curled in rage and revulsion. “I am not—”

“Or do you prefer ‘pet’? Hmm?” The smile was audible in Roga’s voice as tusks brushed the back of Elyon’s head. “You sure did whine like a little animal last night.”

Elyon didn’t know if the surge of movement came from fear or anger—if she was trying to bolt or to fight. Either way, the orc aborted it with authority. The arm across Elyon’s waist jerked her back hard, winding her and bringing into bruising reality the sheer strength difference between herself and her captor. With her bound arms crushed up against the orc’s breasts and a muscular thigh pressed between her legs, Elyon covered her fear with a growl.

“I meant last night,” she said through her teeth. “Why did you…” her voice failed, catching on the threat of a sob, and the orc chuckled. “Why _that?”_

“We'd already established that I can toss you like a rag doll in combat, ropes or none, weapons or none. Thought I’d show you what else I could do to you. You’re welcome.”

“I don’t want— _ghhck!”_ Elyon choked as Roga shoved two fingers into her mouth.

“Don’t contradict me, slave,” the orc said mildly as she inserted a third finger, which was about all Elyon’s elf-sized jaws could accommodate. “And don’t lie.”

Keeping her fingers deep in Elyon’s mouth, Roga braced the heel of her hand beneath the elf’s chin and used the grip to flip her over.

In a moment, Elyon was on her back with the orc’s knee between her thighs, her spine arched over bound arms, her head held still by that iron grip on her lower mandible. She should have bitten. Everything in her training, in her culture, in her concept of who she was said _bite, Elyon! Struggle! Fight back!_

Instead, she just lay there, gagged to silence, and looked up at her captor with wide eyes.

General Roga was a fortress of a creature, a physical marvel. That much had been obvious in how deftly she wielded her axe, but it was all nearer now. The nightshirt exposed firm ropes of muscle, moving subtly beneath gray skin. The size of Roga’s tusks placed her in her late twenties or early thirties—around Elyon’s own age… though Elyon might as well have been a child for how easily the orc manhandled her.

“Don’t forget that I know every inch of you.” Roga breathed, pinning Elyon beneath an unblinking stare. “I _own_ every inch of you.”

The orc seemed bigger now than she had on the field with her axe and full armor—and she had seemed plenty big then. In the heat of battle, Elyon’s mind registered an opponent’s reach, speed, size, and musculature as obstacles to be cataloged and summarily overcome. She was good at that. Overcoming. But here there was no trick of footwork, or leverage, or tactical strategy that could tilt the situation in her favor. Here was just a very dangerous orc, and Elyon, restrained and defenseless beneath her.

“I’ll see through your lies like I saw through your pride, your swordplay, and every one of your attempts to outmaneuver me.”

Elyon had spent her entire life fighting orcs. She didn’t think she had ever seen a living orc’s eyes this close, close enough to count the shifting veins of gold in those irises. Luminous and dangerous, with a touch of mirth that had Elyon transfixed, like a deer before magelight.

“A general, you may have been among elves. But before me, Sylvendra, you are a toy.”

Elyon knew the anguish showed on her face. There was nothing she could do about it. Evidently, she couldn’t even find the will to bite. All she managed, in the end, was a strangled sound of indignation against Roga’s fingers.

“Ah.” Roga’s deep-set golden eyes softened and she withdrew her fingers to rest them on Elyon’s lower lip. “The correct phrasing is ‘permission to speak, ma’am?’”

“I’ll eat hot coal before I say anything of the kind.” Elyon glared, already braced for the physical retribution, ready to welcome it. Maybe the orc would choke her to death this time, finally put her out of her misery as she should have hours ago.

But Roga seemed unbothered. “I understand, Sylvendra. It must be difficult to let go of your pride after so many years of commanding soldiers. But remember…” Saliva-slick fingers traced a line down Elyon’s bare stomach and wandered between her legs. “You have no pride before me.”

Elyon opened her mouth to protest but wet callouses slid against her clitoris and the previous night crashed in on her from all sides—the cries, the moans, the wanting whimpers she had surrendered to that touch. It destroyed her. The fight went out of her like a flame pinched between those wet fingers.

And maybe Roga was right. Maybe all her pride was gone. Maybe that was why, instead of raging, she said, “Please…”

“Pardon?”

“Please,” Elyon hissed and then paused for a moment, fighting the sob in her throat. “Kill me.”

“Oh, Elly.” The orc sounded almost disappointed with her. “Why would I do that?”

“I won’t suffer this indignity.” Elyon made her voice as strong as she could with a finger halfway inside her. “If you don’t kill me, I’ll do it myself. I’ll bite through my tongue and bleed out.”

“I don’t think that’s what you want.”

“You don’t know what I want,” Elyon said icily.

“Don’t I?” Roga’s fingers did something inside Elyon and the world fractured, her spine arching, lips parted in a gasp. The orc’s smug smile, touched with a twinkle of what seemed like genuine affection, made Elyon want to retch.

Anger flared and Elyon, the Silver Arrow, last general of the Deep Woods, decided that she would end this. If Roga wouldn’t agree to kill her, she would give the orc no other choice. Her arms might be tied, but she was Elyon Sylvendra. She could still put up enough of a fight to force her captor’s hand.

Her shin snapped into the side of the orc’s head, catching her by surprise. Before Roga could recover, Elyon braced her upper body back against the furs and whipped her hips around, flipping her over onto her knees and catching Roga with a second much harder kick to the temple in the process. In the ensuing scramble of movement, Elyon squirmed away from the orc and onto the ground, thinking maybe, with her feet under her, maybe—

Roga’s foot hit Elyon so hard that the breath jolted from her body. The force sent her tumbling halfway across the tent before she crashed into the leg of a table and stopped. As she gulped for breath, new bruises pulsing all over her body, she heard the general’s footsteps drawing menacingly closer.

 _Good_ , she thought as the orc reached out to seize her. _Now, the violence. Now, I die_.

But the hand that gripped Elyon’s hair was not violent as much as it was firm. When Roga pulled, it wasn’t hard. Just enough to get the kneeling elf to look her in the face.

“I admire your spirit, Sylvendra, but it’s really no use to you now,” the orc said, all calm.

“No…” Elyon was still struggling for air, for the breath to say _I’m no use to you. Just kill me._ But the orc’s next words left her spinning.

“Now, you don’t want to be responsible for the extinction of your species, do you?”

“Wh-what?”

“Well, from what I gather, General Zardek has recently overcome the elven forces in the east, and he’s not known for leaving survivors. My friends in the west just defeated the last of General Dryandal’s forces, allowing Zardek a clear march through the Deep Woods. I will be very surprised if there is a single surviving elf on your lands by this time tomorrow.”

Elyon clenched her jaw, holding hard to the last scrap of dignity she had. She would not cry in front of this monster.

“In the space of a week, you and the other captives here in my camp could well be all that remains of your species.”

“Other captives?” Elyon made sure her voice was measured, that it didn’t betray the strangling tangle of hope and panic that had suddenly tightened around her heart.

“Your soldiers, Sylvendra. Thirty of them are still alive, secured in cages, waiting for me to decide what to do with them.”

“And… what _are_ you going to do with them?”

“Well, pretty thing, that is going to depend entirely on you.”

Elyon was rigid. With just a few words Roga had hamstrung her and the orc knew it. Elyon had led her soldiers into this situation, into captivity. If there was any chance at all she could still save them, she had to take it.

“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” the orc said, “I’m going to untie you and give you something to wear, you’re going to sit down to a meal with me like a civilized creature—”

“What—?”

“Don’t interrupt.” Roga’s grip tightened just enough to hurt. “We’re going to talk, one general to another, about the fate of your soldiers. And once we’ve discussed your terms of surrender, _then_ you can decide if you would rather live or die. Do we have a deal?”

Elyon’s side was still pulsing with the impact of the kick. What was she supposed to say? Even if Roga was lying through her tusks, what could the captive say except, “Yes.”

“What was that?” Another pull, Elyon’s neck craned back a little further.

“Yes…” Elyon’s numbed voice was still quiet. “Deal.”

Roga released her hair. “On your feet then, soldier.”

Drawn up to her full height, Elyon barely reached Roga’s shoulder. She didn’t know what to do with her eyes. If she looked up into her captor’s face, the angle threw their height difference into embarrassing relief. Down at Roga’s boots and it was like she’d given up already. Straight ahead and her eyes were fixed directly on the orc’s deep gray cleavage in a manner that didn’t seem appropriate. She eventually settled for the clavicle, holding herself still with military rigidity as Roga worked the knots loose.

When the ropes fell away, Elyon wanted terribly to massage the feeling back into her arms, then to wrap them around herself and curl into a ball. But that was weakness she wasn’t willing to show, so she simply flexed her hands a few times and stood tall, pretending to feel no shame at her nakedness.

“Now.” Roga had crossed the tent to dig in one of her several saddlebags. “Why don’t you put this on.”

She threw a rolled-up garment at Elyon, who caught it on reflex. The tunic, clearly one of Roga’s, was comically big on the elf. Though it had been washed, it carried a passing hint of Roga’s skin— worn leather, wood smoke and strange spices—and Elyon realized, with horror, how intimately familiar the scent was. It brought back a whisper of Roga’s hands on on her breasts, her hips, her inner thighs, prizing them open with luxuriant ease. Fighting the urge to shrink, Elyon busied herself tugging the tunic down as far as it would go.

She would have asked for pants but the garment fell past her knees, making it more of a dress. Rolling back the sleeves several times just to find her own hands, Elyon wondered if perhaps she had looked more dignified totally naked. Her wrists, when she turned the sleeves back enough times to expose them, were varying shades of bruised purple and rope-bitten red from hours of fruitless struggle. She knew she looked battered and small before Roga’s pitying laugh added salt to the sting.

“You look like a half-empty sack of grain. I haven’t got a belt your size, so here.” She cut a length of rope and handed it to the elf. “Why don’t you tie that around your waist?”

Elyon took the rope gratefully—not because she cared terribly how appealing she looked in her captor’s spare shirt but because now, at least, she had a means of hanging herself, if it came to that. As she used the rope to cinch the tunic at her waist, Roga pulled a canvas curtain back to reveal that the tent had another room, and Elyon clamped down on her expression to hide her surprise. Roga’s tent had seemed massive before she realized it was actually twice that size. This second chamber was a war room of the kind elves only had in their castles.

“Table in here’s only big enough for one.” Roga nodded to the table in her personal chamber, which could have comfortably seated four elves. “Come.” Roga rested a hand on Elyon’s upper back, as a friend might—only this hand easily spanned the distance between Elyon’s shoulder blades, and if Elyon tried to push back against it, she didn't want to know what would happen. “We’ll eat in the war room.”

At the press of Roga's hand, Elyon stepped into the next chamber and experienced a pang when a familiar shape caught her eye. Her own greatsword rested on a rack alongside several fine foreign weapons that could only be trophies from Roga’s previous conquests—a pair of hooked goblins’ sabers, a dryad’s hardwood spear, a troll’s mace as long as Elyon’s sword and probably weighing more than Roga’s axe.

Numbly, Elyon wondered what had become of the wielders of those weapons. Had they also stood here under Roga’s thumb? Had they also been humiliated before they died? Were there any of their species left in the world to remember them?

“Ah.” Roga saw where Elyon’s eyes had come to rest and smiled. “I usually content myself with weapons for trophies. I suppose, I was decadent this time in claiming two.”

It took Elyon a moment to process what Roga meant by ‘two.’ Two trophies. The sword and Elyon herself.

“But she’s such a beauty, I couldn't help myself.” Roga ran a thumb along the weapon’s wolf’s head guard. “Which reminds me.” She turned to Elyon with a smile. “Does she have a name?”

Elyon answered with ice. “Orcsbane.”

Roga’s eyes narrowed very slightly, glowing with the promise of something—Elyon wasn’t sure what. Perhaps the orc hadn’t decided between derisive laughter or physical violence. Elyon never did get to know what the response would have been, as a rustle of canvas broke the tensile stare between them and a soldier entered.

The newcomer bore two servings of food and Elyon had to concede that the bulky platters would never have fit side-by-side on the smaller table in Roga’s personal chamber. At a gesture from his general, the orc set the food at either end of the war room table, heedless of the maps spread across its surface. Elyon supposed, with a throb of unspeakable pain, that the maps were no longer needed. All were war maps and the war for the Deep Woods was over now.

“Sit." Roga gestured to one of the rough-hewn chairs when the soldier had gone. “And disregard the maps…. especially that one.” With an air of annoyance, she tugged a parchment sketch from beneath the platter. "It's stupid." In the moment before she crumpled the diagram, Elyon discerned what appeared to be a plan to storm the ravine on foot.

“That’s—”

“A joke,” Roga cut her off shortly. “Sit.”

But orcs didn’t joke about their battle plans, even against little creatures like elves. Elyon’s ploy to draw her enemies into the ravine had fooled someone among the orcs’ senior officers. It just hadn’t fooled Roga. So, she supposed there was no point wondering how close her plan had come to working. A general couldn’t afford to dwell on such things.

When Elyon slid into the chair, her feet didn’t quite touch the ground, so she tucked them onto the spindle, trying not to feel like a child. The food before her wasn’t unlike an elf’s rations—a hunk of meat from the day’s hunt alongside a mound of rice—only four times the size. Elves usually included greens in a meal if they could, but they had long since lost the farmland necessary to grow vegetables and grains like rice. Elyon had grown up on venison alongside whatever non-poisonous leaves could be found in the woods nearby. In the winter, she had often eaten boiled bark.

“Eat, Sylvendra,” Roga said, taking the seat opposite Elyon and washing her hands in the bowl of water alongside her plate.

“I don’t want to eat, General.” Empty as her stomach was, Elyon didn’t know if she could keep anything down at the moment. “I want to talk about my soldiers.”

“And so we will.” Roga tore a strip of venison free with her formidable tusks and seemed to swallow it without chewing. “But first, we share a meal. We have a day ahead of us and you especially, will need your strength.”

“Why?” Elyon demanded, not liking the orc’s ominous phrasing.

“Eat,” Roga ordered impatiently, “and we will talk.”

Elyon clenched, itching to stand, to _demand_ a negotiation _now_. But she reminded herself brutally that she was not in command here. She could still feel rough fingers rammed down her throat. _Don’t talk back._ If that was what arguing would get her, what was the point in pursuing it—other than to sate her own pride? The object here was to do what she could for her captured soldiers. If her pride didn't serve that, she had to let it go.

So, swallowing her protests, Elyon washed her hands and focused on the venison before her. The smell of cooked meat alone should have made her salivate. But it was as if Elyon’s hunger—her constant companion since childhood—had deserted her along with her will to live. She could do little more than pick at the meal. Each mouthful was a struggle.

“What’s the matter?” Roga asked after a time. “Too tough for you?”

Elyon bristled. Thanks to Roga’s people driving hers ever further back off plentiful lands, Elyon had eaten nothing but ‘tough’ food her whole life. To prove her point she cracked a bone open with her teeth and dug out the marrow.

“There’s savagery I was promised,” Roga smiled and Elyon’s fists clenched in helpless hatred. That was always the line of logic with orcs, wasn’t it? If another species wasn’t weak, they were ‘savage.’ Either way, they didn’t deserve to draw breath. “You really are a little animal, aren’t you?”

The splintered bone in Elyon’s hand was sharp and Roga had no weapon.

“Have I touched a nerve, Sylvendra?”

Elyon’s mind burned. Roga was fast but Elyon was faster; she could be on the table and across it before the orc had a chance to push out her chair and turn to the weapons rack. A feint toward the eye to get Roga to raise her arm, followed by a half-moon reverse would drive the bone into the orc’s windpipe in the soft juncture between her jaw bones and…

_And then what?_

After Roga had drowned in her own blood, Elyon and her soldiers would be tortured to death in retribution. Elyon might take Orcsbane and escape before the murder was discovered, but she wouldn’t. Not without her people. And then they would all be killed. Ultimately, Elyon would still be responsible for their deaths…

“Decided against it, have you?” This orc really was disturbingly perceptive.

“Not definitively.” Elyon glared across the table, her thumb fidgeting on the nub of the broken bone. “Doesn’t any sane general know not to bargain with savages?”

“We don’t have to bargain, if you don’t want to.” Roga leaned tauntingly back in her chair, muscular arms folded behind her head, as if daring Elyon to come for her throat. “I can have you and all your elves put to death with a word, like I have all my past enemies.” She tilted her head toward the rack of ‘trophies’ behind her. “But you see, I think that might not be necessary. I think you can be tamed.”

The little Elyon had eaten threatened to come up. “Tamed?”

“Sportingly setting aside the delightful noises you made last night, you haven’t used that.” Her eyes flicked to the bone splintered clutched hard in Elyon’s hand.

“I haven’t let go of it either, General.”

“But you will,” Roga said, “because I order it.”

“Why would—”

“I can ensure that all your soldiers reach the capital alive and that, once there, they’re not sold into lives of unendurable misery. I can ensure that they’re allowed to reproduce, that your species doesn’t disappear from history.”

“We won’t disappear from history,” Elyon insisted fiercely. They couldn’t. Wood elves had lived in this region for thousands of years.

“I suppose, you’re right,” Roga said. “After every vestige of your civilization has been burned from the land, your people will be listed among the less notable victories of General Roga, General Zardek, and General Gnull in the Imperial records. A good enough legacy for a gaggle of savages, I suppose.”

“Better than slavery,” Elyon snarled to drown out the cold weight of that thought... being entirely forgotten.

“If you say so.” Roga stood. “Then let’s go.”

“Go?”

“To the cages, Sylvendra. We’ll open them up and you can inform my soldiers that they’re free to do whatever they like to yours for the next three days, according to custom. At the end of that time, any of your poor elves who are still alive will be put to death alongside their leader.”

Elyon was mute with horror.

Of course, she had always known this was how the orcs dealt with their captives. It was how they terrified so many creatures out of resisting them. But the prospect of watching it happen to her own siblings in arms, of being the cause, was too much.

“I said, let’s go, elf. I do have other matters to attend to today.”

“No…” Elyon’s voice was birch bark thin, no more than a whisper.

“What was that?”

“Spare them. Please.” Elyon opened her fingers and let go of the bone splinter she had been clutching like a lifeline. “Tell me what I need to do.”


	4. The Victory Post

Elyon hunched into herself in the oversized chair, awaiting a triumphant sneer, but it didn’t come. There was only a soft shuffle of movement as Roga sat back down across from her. Perhaps the orc was satisfied letting her victory hang in the silence. Perhaps there was such abject despair in Elyon’s posture that it aroused some measure of pity in the orc.

When Roga spoke, her voice was almost gentle. “All you need to do to keep your people alive is serve as my slave.”

“Your slave?” The word was like ash on Elyon’s tongue.

“It’s not a complicated role to fill, Sylvendra. You submit to my authority in all things, address me with respect, speak when spoken to, and look pretty. That last part, at least, should give you no trouble. We’ll work on the rest.”

“And you’ll protect my soldiers?”

“From death and potentially fatal abuse, yes. Now, anyone who knows me will attest that I’m not an unmerciful orc. Demanding I may be, but I always reward competence. Serve me well, and your fellow elves may enjoy more privileges. Serve me _surpassingly_ well, and I can see my way to making them quite comfortable.”

“How…” Elyon focused hard on a notch in the wood grain of the table and pretended her words were coming out of someone else’s mouth. “How would one serve you surpassingly well?”

“Sylvendra, dear, you’re not there yet,” Roga said in amusement. “Trust me. For today, I’ll settle for obedience. Do we have a deal?”

Again, as if the words were not her own, Elyon answered. “Yes, General.”

“Excellent.” Roga smiled. “Place your hands flat on the table and do not move them.”

Elyon did as instructed, feeling numb, and small, and like the world had ended. She was still as a deer as Roga rounded the table and came to stand behind her.

“Now,” the orc’s voice was still low and gentle. “I swear by Orn and my axe that as long as you obey me, your soldiers will live.”

Gray hands appeared on either side of Elyon. One of them held a thick circle of leather with a steel ring on one side and a latch on the other. Numbly, Elyon realized it was a collar.

“Your turn to swear.” Roga unfastened the latch, opening the collar before Elyon’s throat. “Swear on the lives of your soldiers and the graves of your family that you will serve as my slave and obey me in all things.”

Elyon didn’t remember saying the words—she was so focused on the foreboding circle of leather—but she must have said them because Roga responded with a satisfied “Good,” before adding, “Hands _flat_ on the table.”

Glancing down. Elyon realized that her fingers, unbidden, had curled into fists.

“Yes, General,” she murmured and spread her hands on the map of the Deep Woods. Her home... which now belonged to the orcs. Just as she did.

As her hands flattened out again, Roga brought the collar to her neck, so that the leather just touched her throat. “The correct response is ‘Yes, Master.’”

Elyon swallowed, the muscles of her throat moving tensely against the leather.

“Say it.”

“Yes…” Elyon closed her eyes. “Yes, Master.” And the collar clicked closed.

A hand touched the top of her head with something like affection. Like it had the first time she had orgasmed the previous night.

_Good girl._

Then the hand was gone and Elyon was left sitting there with her palms on the table and the collar resting around her neck. It wasn’t obedience that kept her frozen where the orc had left her. She just wasn’t sure she could move... because she wasn’t sure the world was real anymore. Surely, if she moved, reality would shake apart like a dissipating dream and she, the tent, the maps, and all they depicted would cease to exist.

In the next room, Roga was getting out of her nightclothes and into her armor, but none of that was real. If the Deep Woods had fallen, if Elyon was a slave, then nothing was real. Because that wouldn’t happen… the real Elyon Sylvendra wouldn’t have _let_ it happen…

She was still frozen when Roga came to stand by her and said, “Come.”

She was frozen when the orc sighed in annoyance and fixed a leather rhino’s lead to the ring of the collar.

She was frozen when Roga roughly said her name.

It wasn’t until a hand gripped the lead near the ring and _pulled_ that the world moved again. Elyon choked, stumbled from the chair, but didn’t vanish from existence. Reality persisted with brazen illogic, the earth still solid beneath Elyon’s bare feet, her body still registering pain, as if the world hadn’t just ended.

“Focus, soldier,” Roga said and that did it.

The word ‘soldier’ snapped Elyon out of her trance through sheer trained reflex.

“Ma’am,” she said abruptly, focused, as ordered.

“Are you ill?”

“No, ma’am,” the answer came easily.

Elyon had been here before. She may have been promoted incredibly young, but for years before that, she had taken orders from superiors. She could do this. Ignoring the leash and collar, she could do this.

“Good,” Roga said, “because you’ll need to be strong to make it through the rest of today.”

“Wh-what happens today?” Elyon asked, two fingers pressed absently beneath the collar where the leather had dug into her skin.

“Today, General Sylvendra, you get to be the main and only point of attraction at the victory post.”

Elyon’s mind went blank. “Oh.”

This was it, the horror she had been expecting at the hands of the orcs. She just hadn’t expected to have to live to the end of it.

Roga eyed her in confusion. “You took that better than I expected… Are you that brave or do you not know what an orc victory post is?”

“No.” Elyon’s voice was empty. “I know.”

“Splendid. Then you won’t need the pep-talk I had planned.” Roga grinned, although the expression didn’t reach her golden eyes. “It wasn’t very reassuring anyway.” The orc turned to leave the tent, leash in hand. “Follow me.”

Elyon’s fingers caught on the leash before she registered what she was doing. At the tug of resistance, Roga looked over her shoulder. “What now?”

“This isn’t necessary,” Elyon said and added belatedly, “ma’am.”

“Excuse me?”

“I gave you my word I would obey. I…” _I need to walk there myself. I need my dignity._ “You don’t need to lead me like an animal.”

Roga turned square with the elf, towering over her. In the beat of malevolent silence that followed, Elyon realized she had made a mistake, opened her mouth again—and paid for it.

The yank on the leash was so sudden and forceful that Elyon was surprised that neither her neck nor the ring of the collar broke. She pitched forward and would have fallen directly into the armored orc but Roga caught her by the throat. Powerful fingers gripped the base of her jaw with bruising force—not quite choking her but leaving no question who was in control.

“You gave your word to serve as my slave.” Roga lifted slightly and Elyon’s heels left the ground, putting painful pressure on her neck. “That means that you do as I say without, complaint, input, or backtalk of any kind.”

Elyon let out a grunt of pain, struggling to support herself on the balls of her feet. In response, Roga raised the elf a little higher, lifting her feet clear off the ground, and bringing her face in close.

“If I put you on a leash and say ‘follow,’ then you follow, on a leash.”

Elyon was choking, her hands grasping ineffectually at the orc’s impossibly muscular forearm.

“I would hit you, but what you have coming should be sufficient to put you in your place.” Roga dropped Elyon back on her heels. “Now, _slave_ , follow.”

This time, if only because she couldn’t breathe, Elyon obeyed without complaint.

She kept her eyes down as she followed Roga through the orcs’ encampment, focusing hard on the progression of grass and leaf litter before her own feet. Maybe it was the cowardly thing to do. There was an Elyon Sylvendra who would have held her head high and returned the glare of every orc they passed. But this new Elyon, she worried, carried too much shock and pain on her face. She didn’t want any orc to see that, so she kept her head down.

“Not so tough without the cover of shadow, Silver Arrow,” voices mocked from the tents they passed.

“The bitch looks better on a leash.”

“Ready for the post, you little whore?”

Elyon focused on the grass so intently that she hardly noticed the leash going slack. She pulled up just short of running into her captor's back.

“Welcome to the victory post, Sylvendra,” Roga said and added, in a strangely sedate voice, “You don’t have to look up.”

Of course, the moment Roga said it, Elyon raised her head. There wasn’t much to see of the post itself, just a thick wooden pole with some manacles attached. Then the creak of ropes hit Elyon’s ears and she lifted her gaze higher, to the branches above. Heads hung from the trees. Elves’ heads. Strung up by the hair.

“Easy, Sylvendra,” Roga said, likely observing the stricken look on Elyon’s face. “They’re just the ones who died in battle. You know, for dramatic effect… I _did_ say you didn’t have to look.”

But Elyon _did_ have to look. She had to know. Immediately, she recognized the fine-boned face of her second lieutenant, Syres, pale with death, her lips still parted in surprise. There was Elyon's old training partner, Remilyon. There was her best archer, Aynara, down one eye. Elyon took a moment on each face and said their names to herself. The sight may have been hideous and painful, but it was the last time she would see their faces… All these elves, who had been so loyal, who had trusted her until the end…

“Their suffering is over,” Roga said, though Elyon barely heard her. “I’d worry far more about yourself if I were you.”

 _No red hair_ , Elyon noted after a second scan of the heads. _No Terryn Keldir…_ Did that mean her lieutenant had lived? Or just that his skull had been broken beyond use as an ornament? Before Elyon could torture herself by contemplating which Terryn would have preferred, Roga’s voice cut into her thoughts again.

“Ah, morning, Mag!”

The orc approaching them had burnt chestnut hair, distinct from Roga's mane of black locks. She was shorter than Roga—which still gave her nearly a full head on Elyon—and a bit leaner, with a mean, almost underfed look to her.

“Good morning, General.” Her green eyes moved from Roga down to Elyon with a cruel, mirthless smile. _“General.”_

“I think you met Lieutenant Magdur when you bit her last night,” Roga said, though Elyon had actually encountered this orc— _Magdur_ —weeks earlier. “She’s going to be responsible for seeing that you don’t die during the next several hours, so it would be wise of you to apologize.”

Elyon swallowed and murmured, “Sorry, Lieutenant.”

“For what, Sylvendra?” Roga prompted as if speaking to a child.

“For biting.” Elyon’s gaze lifted to meet Magdur’s. “And for killing your rhino last month.”

Elyon was surprised as she was gratified to see what looked like genuine hurt flash through the lieutenant’s eyes. It only lasted a split second before hardening to something dangerous.

“I think she’ll need this, ma’am.” Magdur passed Roga something that clinked. “It’s sized for Azreth, so she may struggle a bit, but well... isn't that the idea?”

Before Elyon got a look at the device in Roga’s hand, the orc gripped her by the back of the neck and steered her to the victory post. Elyon was oddly thankful for the rough hand. Without it, she would have had to walk to the post herself and, with the reality of those manacles hanging before her, she suddenly wasn’t sure she had it in her. When they reached the rough-hewn post, Roga turned the elf around and unclipped the lead from her collar.

“Kneel.”

When Elyon didn’t obey immediately, Roga casually slammed a boot into the back of her knee and pressed down. Elyon buckled rather than have her leg broken, her knees thudding hard into the packed dirt around the post.

“A bit slow to obey, isn’t she?” Magdur observed, “You know, for such an infamously quick little animal?”

“Ah, she’s learning,” Roga said dismissively. “Hands, Sylvendra.”

This time, Elyon did obey promptly and Roga locked her wrists into the cuffs above her head. The manacles were intended for a creature larger than Elyon and knocked uncomfortably against the bones in her wrists. If she put her mind to it, she could have slipped them with minimal damage to her hands, but that wasn’t the point, was it? The point was to kneel here and submit to whatever punishment her captors visited on her, let them vent all their frustrations with her people. The point was for her to take it, so that was what she would do. Better her than Terryn... or whichever survivor ranked next in the chain of command. It didn't matter. Elyon was the one who had brought them here, so she would take the consequences.

A finger tapped Elyon’s chin, prompting her to look up. “Open your mouth, pretty.”

Licking her lips, Elyon did as she was told.

“Wider.”

Elyon obeyed and Roga jammed something metal in between her teeth. A kind of gag, Elyon realized, as Roga brought leather straps across her cheeks to fasten the device behind her head.

“Look at that,” Roga smiled, and Elyon bit back a squeak of pain as the strap yanked tight.

“I’ll be damned,” Magdur said from somewhere off to the side, less enthusiastic but just as surprised. “That little mouth really can take a lot.”

The hard ring kept Elyon’s jaw stretched open while additional pieces of metal pushed her lips back painfully, creating an unobstructed entrance for… Elyon didn’t want to think about it. She just wanted to die.

“Now, don’t look at me like that,” Roga admonished, tucking a lock of Elyon’s hair behind her ear. “This is your doing, Sylvendra, not mine.”

Even with the use of her mouth, Elyon couldn’t have argued with that.

The most powerful and possessive of orcs were still bound to honor the tradition of the victory post: the highest-ranking enemy taken alive had to spend a full day at the post, paying for their race’s crimes against the orcs. If Elyon hadn’t wanted to end up here, she should have found a way to win—or at least kill herself before it came to this, leave one of her lieutenants to suffer in her place. She felt her calm cracking, threatening panic—

“I’ve told you, I’m not unmerciful.” Roga’s hand was still in Elyon’s hair, brushing it back softly, as if she could sense the terror Elyon was barely holding beneath the surface. “See this?” The orc tugged on a blood-red cord tied to the post above Elyon’s head. “The red means they can use your mouth only. No nonsense between the legs.”

Elyon hated the surge of near-hysterical relief that flooded in through the breach in her crumbling calm. Considering what Elyon knew of orc tradition, this was an enormous mercy. It was more lenience than she ever would have expected, even assuming Roga wanted to keep her alive.

“After all, I want you broken, not torn in two. And this…” Roga tugged the ring of Elyon’s collar, “is my claim of ownership. It means that anyone who kills you or inflicts permanent damage will answer to me—or, in the short term, to Lieutenant Magdur,” she smiled fondly over her shoulder at the other orc, “which might be worse. She doesn’t like being interrupted in the middle of her tedious clerical work.”

“It’s not—” Magdur began petulantly, but seemed to think better of arguing. That or Roga’s amused smile made her realize that the general was jokingly trying to get a rise out of her; Elyon was having trouble parsing the dynamic between the two orcs. “When am I to intercede, General?”

“Only if there’s serious damage… or if she screams, I suppose.”

“She’s a tiny elf, General,” Magdur said derisively. “Of course, she’s going to scream.”

“Mm.” Roga looked back at Elyon. “Her stubbornness might surprise you.”

“Well, she can discard that, if she wants to live.” For the first time, Magdur’s monstrous green eyes fixed directly on the captive and Elyon—perhaps a bit foolishly—didn’t look away.

“She does,” Roga said confidently, “and she will. Now, Sylvendra, I have to go hunt down your remaining scouts.”

Elyon felt a little more hope flicker out of her soul. It had been stupid, she supposed, to assume that Roga wouldn’t know about the scouts left back at the ravine, like it was stupid to hope they might escape now.

“Lieutenant Magdur will be doing inventory in her office.” Roga indicated a tent not far from the victory post. “She’ll hear you scream if things get out of hand. Though before that…” Roga clapped Magdur on the shoulder with a smile Elyon didn’t like at all. “As my highest-ranking officer, she gets the first run at you.” And Roga left them there, calling, “Have fun, girls!” over her shoulder.

As soon as Roga had gone, Magdur rounded on Elyon, the animal bones braided into her hair clacking ominously, and Elyon shifted nervously in the oversized manacles.

The last time Elyon had seen Magdur, she had smiled down at the orc from decisively won high ground. After Elyon had cut her mount from under her, she had never quite recovered control of herself or her scouting party. As a fighter and commander, this orc was Elyon’s inferior, underconfident and easily flustered. But it was hard to feel any measure of superiority chained and muzzled like an animal. And it was hard to conceptualize Magdur as anything but very big and very dangerous as she came to loom over Elyon, the heads of slain elves swaying at her back.

This time, Elyon cast her eyes down, but the small show of submission seemed to do nothing to ease the lieutenant’s annoyance. She hooked a finger into the ring of Elyon’s gag and pulled—like a rider on the rein of a stag. The pain was excruciating, and Elyon found herself regretting the jab about the rhino, regretting killing the stupid beast in the first place. She clamped her throat shut on a scream, which turned instead to a high, smothered grunt.

“Look, Silver Arrow,” Magdur hissed through sharp tusks, “I don’t know what little spell you cast on the general but you should be dead right now.”

Had Elyon had the use of her mouth, she might have expressed agreement. Instead, she just held herself still and tried to keep her eyes from watering.

“You don’t know how lucky you are; I doubt your miserable little fist-sized brain has the capacity to appreciate this, but there are a hundred creatures better than you, _stronger_ than you, who would give anything to serve at her feet.”

Elyon realized, intrigued even through her pain, that Magdur was one of those creatures. This was jealousy. However insane.

“If ever I feel that you are less than grateful for you position, I will borrow you for a night and I will _make_ you grateful. Do we understand each other, Elyon Sylvendra?”

Elyon could only manage a twitch of her chin she hoped Magdur would take as a nod.

“You aren’t worthy to lick the grime from her boots.”

 _Yes,_ Elyon’s brain supplied with malice, _that does seem more your style than mine._

And she considered that perhaps she could start humoring Magdur by being _grateful_ that Roga had gagged her.

Magdur’s face had darkened as though she would very much like to haul her other fist back and knock out a few of Elyon’s teeth. But she seemed to think better of it. Thin lips pursed between her tusks and she released the ring. Elyon let her head fall, biting back a groan as blood pulsed back into her strained lips.

When she risked a glance up again, Magdur’s sinewy hand was on the red cord, rolling it slowly, contemplatively between gray-green fingers and, with a jolt of horror, Elyon wondered if she was going to untie it. Would she do that? If Magdur got rid of the red rope, if she—Gods forbid—took off the collar, there would be nothing to keep Elyon from being raped to death while Roga was away. There would be no one to protect the other elves.

Frantically, she looked up at Magdur and found a terrible smile on the orc’s face.

“Like I said, slave…” Magdur dropped the rope and gave Elyon’s forehead a hard flick. “Gratitude.”

And she was walking away, leaving the elf to her fate. “Do scream if you fear for your life, Sylvendra. I may wish you dead, but unlike you, I won’t disappoint the general.”

Magdur disappeared into her tent, and Elyon, out of spite, resolved not to scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, next chapter, we're going to be cutting past the oral sexual assault by dozens of orcs in the interest of keeping this story f/f (because that's just where my head's at right now).
> 
> Also, idk what happened with Magdur. She didn't start out with a personality, but I have a tendency to accidentally overdevelop side characters.


	5. Only Pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I haven’t updated in a while, but wow, 100 kudos? That’s awesome! I started this story figuring it would be too niche to get more than a couple hits, so thank you all so much for reading! As promised, we’re skipping past the graphic Victory ritual to more Roga and Elyon. Enjoy the late but extra long chapter.

It was a spectacularly frustrating day. Eight hours of tracking and pursuit and all Roga had to show for it was an arrow in one of her orcs. Had Roga been the one shot, it might not have been so bad, but Garwig moped and whinged about the injury until Roga was tempted to take his crossbow and shoot him herself. Had he not been a half-decent tracker, she might have. But ‘half-decent’ wasn’t sufficient when tracking elves on their home turf. Every time the orcs seemed to be closing on Sylvendra’s scouts, the wretched little creatures melted into the green like ghosts.

When the sun began to bleed red through the trees, Roga had to admit defeat and turn her party back toward camp. Orcs and wood elves were matched for night vision but darkness favored the ambush predator. Driving her party on through the dense woods after sunset would be inviting attack.

“We meet back here at dawn tomorrow,” Roga said as she reined in her rhino at the edge of camp.

“But General, I’m…”

“Not you, idiot,” she growled at Garwig.

“But—” another orc started only to swallow the rest of her sentence when Roga turned a murderous glare on her.

“At dawn,” Roga repeated and dismounted. Sensing her irritation, her usually standoffish rhino moved her head to nuzzle her master in comfort.

“Not now, Ylgor.” Roga pushed the monstrous woolly head away and set off for the victory post.

She stalked through the camp like a stormfront, driving soldiers and slaves before her like frightened animals. The only creature who didn’t get out of her way promptly was one of the smallest—a little rabbit-folk slave called Shara-Lee—and that was only because she was struggling to walk beneath a yoke attached to two full buckets of water. The little lagosa trembled, long ears flat against her head in fear, but couldn’t scurry off under more than her own weight in water.

“Give me that,” Roga snapped and grabbed the yoke off Shara-Lee’s shoulders as she passed.

As soon as the weight lifted, the slave bobbed in a terrified bow and bolted as only a lagosa could. Ignoring her, Roga slung the yoke to one shoulder and pressed on to the victory post with a burning knot of something in the pit of her stomach… Not anxiety, she decided. Why should she be anxious for the elf’s well-being? She wasn’t. She was eager to see Sylvendra appropriately punished for all the trouble she had caused—and _continued_ to cause—the Empire.

In that regard, the sight that greeted Roga was not a disappointment. Elyon Sylvendra hung limply from the manacles, utterly still. Unconscious. Even with her hair falling over her face, covering what was likely the worst of the damage, it was clear how hard Roga’s soldiers had given it to her. Sylvendra’s hair and knees were splattered with grotesque layers of semen, some dried, some fresh. Some of the injuries to her arms had likely been intentional while others had resulted from the oversized manacles jostling her wrists. The pointed ears protruding from her hair were bloody—bitten, it appeared.

It should have been satisfying to see the proud creature in such a state—covered in the cum of her enemies, so used she had fainted—but strangely, all Roga wanted was to get the filth off the elf. _Her_ elf. Setting the yoke, down Roga detached one of the buckets, gripped it by the rim, and doused Sylvendra.

The elf gasped awake, manacles rattling.

“Look at me,” Roga commanded and, when Sylvendra complied, upended the bucket on her upturned face.

The second deluge left the elf coughing and struggling for breath. The water had washed most of the cum from her face and mouth, but the sight beneath was still pitiful. Sylvendra’s lips had split against the gag and oozed fresh blood even as Roga watched. She was bruised to hell, one eye swollen half shut. The other twitched at the cum still stuck in her eyelashes.

Roga’s insides curled in directionless rage. There was something unexpectedly— _viscerally_ —upsetting about seeing the evidence of use on her slave. She didn’t realize she had flung the bucket down until it banged off the ground and Sylvendra flinched.

Roga didn’t think she had seen the elf flinch before.

That too made her oddly angry and she was rougher than necessary when she moved to uncuff her slave. Sylvendra’s body trembled when the manacles came free, her muscles trying to hold her up, but they failed her and she dropped forward onto her elbows in the dirt.

“Did you enjoy your day of punishment?” Roga sneered as the elf painstakingly pulled herself upright onto her knees. “You’re lucky it was just one day and just your mouth.”

If Roga had had her way, she wouldn’t have shared Sylvendra out at all. But if you were going to keep an infamous enemy general alive, you had to pay a small toll. And it really was small; Sylvendra was still alive, wasn't she? Why was Roga so primally angry?

“You may remove the gag and thank me for my mercy.”

The elf just knelt there with a dead look in her eyes.

“Go on, slave,” Roga prompted, and her captive was not dead after all. Gray eyes flicked up to meet hers in a heartbeat of sheer malevolence before dropping again. Then, slowly, Sylvendra moved. She used only her right hand to work open the buckle at the back of her head. Her left, she held gingerly in her lap, seemingly careful not to move it, and Roga noticed deep bruising along the base of the thumb and forefinger.

“What happened to your hand?”

“I…” Sylvendra had finagled the strap open with her good hand and was now gingerly separating the cruel device from her mouth. It had left bleeding lacerations on her lips. “Ssh’b… roken… ma’am.”

“What?”

Sylvendra ran her tongue around her mouth, winced, and tried again. “It’sh… broken.”

“I can see that, slave. How did it _get_ broken?”

“Oh… What?” Sylvendra blinked, her usually sharp eyes unfocused. “I… kinda think… I ruined your shirt.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m concussed… ma’am.”

“From what? Who hit you?”

“Shall I make a list?”

The unhappiness in Roga turned to rage. “Watch your mouth.”

The laugh was dark and ragged.

“Something amuses you, elf?”

“Didn’ find my scouts, I take it?”

Roga punched Sylvendra in the gut.

Too hard, she realized immediately. There was a whole day’s worth of unspent anger packed into the blow. The elf folded over Roga’s fist and retched but nothing came up. Judging by the smell, she had already vomited more times than her little stomach could take. When Roga drew her arm back, the elf crumpled to the ground, her left arm clutching her belly. Her right hand braced against the ground as she tried to rise but Roga put a boot to her head with a warning growl of, “Stay down!”

If Sylvendra picked herself up and pricked Roga’s fury with another snide little barb, Roga was going to knock her head off. And Roga was intrigued at how much she wanted to avoid that. It didn’t make a lot of sense; her usual reaction to elves was a desire to knock their heads off. But she really wanted to keep this beaten inexplicably unbroken thing. So she took a few deep breaths through her tusks to get her anger under control.

“Speak out of turn again and I will dismember every elf in this camp.”

With Roga’s boot grinding into her bruised cheek and bloodied ear, Sylvendra shook in pain but stayed silent.

“Now, up, slave.” Roga removed her boot. “I don’t have all day.”

Head down, Sylvendra struggled to her knees. The ruined tunic had ridden up, revealing that her legs were an Orndamned mess. The orcs may not have fucked her between the legs, but some of them had stomped and kicked. The elf shook as she rose and fell back to the dirt.

“Bear in mind that the fate of your species hinges on your obedience,” Roga said, attaching the lead to the elf’s collar. “I can have them killed now if you’re too weak to stand.”

The look in Sylvendra’s eyes was chilling. Pure hatred. As if fueled by it, she pushed herself to her feet and, when her leash was pulled, limped after her owner.

Her ankle was swollen—sprained or broken, Roga guessed—and putting weight on it drained what little color was left in her face. But she somehow made it across the camp and around to the back of Roga’s tent where the slaves had left the usual barrel of water. Having just barely lurched her way to their destination, Sylvendra swayed precariously they stopped, and only stayed upright by gripping the lip of the barrel with her right hand.

“Strip.”

The elf started to obey with shaking fingers, but she moved too slowly.

With a low growl, Roga gripped the tunic in her fists and tore it in half in one movement. A noise like a yelp came out of Sylvendra as the filthy garment ripped free, leaving her naked in the crisp autumn air. The weak little sound might have gratified Roga but it was promptly offset by the sight of the full damage to Sylvendra’s body—the bruised ribs and breasts, the _boot marks._

A surge of rage took over and she picked the elf up roughly.

Sylvendra’s good hand grasped at Roga’s shoulder, her voice breathless with panic. “General, what—"

That was as far as she got before Roga dumped her into the barrel.

The water was cold and Sylvendra bobbed back up, gasping, eyes wide with shock. As she coughed, Roga seized the back of her neck and forced her head under again.

The elf, understandably, panicked. Water sloshed from the barrel and soft nails scrabbled uselessly at Roga’s forearm beneath the surface. Even at her full strength, Sylvendra wasn’t very effective at resisting Roga; broken and spent as she was now, she might as well have been a kitten.

The cool water and the feeling of struggle soothed Roga. She felt some of her frustration dissipate as the elf twisted and thrashed in the water, helpless against her. It was only after a moment that she considered that holding her weak-as-a-kitten captive underwater was probably not the best idea and let go.

Sylvendra broke the surface noisily this time, her gasps more like sobs.

“Clean yourself,” Roga ordered. “Thoroughly. Then wait for me in my tent.”

She wanted to be able to stand there and savor the pathetic sight of the infamous General Sylvendra, shivering, soaking wet, near tears. But she needed to hit something and it couldn’t be the elf. Not now. Not if she wanted her to stay in one piece.

So Roga turned from her trembling prisoner and made her way back across the camp.

“Lieutenant,” she said, pushing into Magdur’s tent without preamble.

“General.” Magdur looked up from her work as her slave wisely made himself scarce. “I didn’t realize you were back.”

“I told you to see that she wasn’t too badly damaged.”

“What? The elf? She’s not dead, is she?”

“Magdur…” As Roga stalked toward the desk, Mag registered the danger and stood, suddenly alert.

“I’m sorry, General,” she said hastily, although far too late to stave off the inevitable. “I’d have stopped the ritual if she screamed.”

“She’s bruised to hell, concussed, and her hand is broken.”

Mag shook her head, clearly resigned to what was coming. “She didn’t scream…”

↞✶↠

Roga left Magdur’s tent with throbbing knuckles. Darkness had fallen while cricket song had risen around the camp. A passing voice in Roga’s head said that perhaps she had hit the lieutenant a little too hard—or three, four times too many—but Magdur could take a punch. There wasn’t an orc in Roga’s camp who couldn’t take a good lick from their commanding officer. It was part of the job, how they kept each other hard and strong. Roga’s own jaw was smarting where Magdur had struck back; no orc with any pride took a beating lying down. And sure, Magdur wasn’t a match for Roga in any meaningful way but she always put up a good enough fight for Roga to let off steam.

The day’s anger had been hammered out and Roga was calm as she reentered her own tent.

Elyon Sylvendra knelt on the furs near the bed, washed as ordered, and naked in the cooling night air.

She certainly looked more appealing clean but no less of a wreck. Her pale body was a mess of bruises and her usual poise was strained. Her right leg stuck off to the side awkwardly, more swollen than it had been earlier. Walking across camp on it had clearly been the wrong move—and the violent struggle in the barrel likely hadn’t done it any good either.

“Well,” Roga said conversationally, “my orcs really worked you over didn’t they?”

Sylvendra was silent, her gaze fixed on her own bruised knees, her golden hair hanging in ropes around her. Roga wondered if the elf had taken the time to untangle the snarls with her one good hand or if that silken hair unknotted itself by some ridiculous elven magic—because damp as it was, it did look ridiculously soft.

“My commendations on surviving your first Victory ritual.”

It seemed to take every ounce of the elf’s self-control to hold herself still as Roga approached. She shook ever so slightly when Roga’s fingers touched her hair, her own fingers clenched in the furs. For whatever reason, she was as frightened now as she had been the previous night, bound and blindfolded. No. More so.

Roga was surprised—but not displeased—when the elf cleared her throat and spoke.

“I’ve inconvenienced you.”

“A bit,” Roga agreed.

“Sorry…” Sylvendra started as though the word was the worst thing she had tasted all day, and Roga wondered if the elf had it in her to finish the sentence—however she meant to finish it. _Sorry my scouts are elusive little monsters,_ maybe? _Sorry I killed your best and second-best trackers. Sorry my species is such a nightmarish blight on the Empire._ After a moment, she settled for, “Sorry I didn’t scream.”

“Are you?” Roga ran a finger over a pointed ear. “Or are you just worried I’ll break more bones.”

“I’d have screamed if I was scared of broken bones.”

Roga let her hand trail down the side of Sylvendra’s face to cup her chin. “I do find it interesting that you didn’t cry out through an entire day of punishment. You were quite… _vocal_ with me.”

Eyelids flickering with shame, Sylvendra tried to look away, but Roga kept ahold of her chin, tilting her face up further.

“How did you manage to bear the abuse of several dozen orcs without a sound?”

“It was only pain, General,” the elf said quietly. “I can take pain.”

This was perhaps an overly self-congratulatory claim from a creature whose eye twitched when Roga’s fingers pressed too hard into her bruised cheek. The ordeal had clearly left Sylvendra shaken, fearful of further physical punishment, but it somehow hadn’t penetrated to that keening core of anguish and despair at the heart of her. All those angry orcs hadn’t done to her what Roga had done.

“And what _can’t_ you take, Sylvendra?”

Even so beaten, the elf clutched resentment to her like a shield. “That’s a horrible question to ask,” she murmured and then grimaced slightly at her own words, as if bracing for the touch on her face to turn cruel. That in itself was a kind of arrogance—assuming she could anticipate her master’s actions. Had she truly been able to read Roga, after all, she would never have been captured.

“Perhaps,” Roga said, her thumb roving idly over Sylvendra’s sweet bloodied lips, “but you’re my slave, so you’ll answer it anyway.”

“You.” Her eyes were chips of ice, sharp in their fragility. “I can’t take _you.”_ It was defiant in that it wasn’t something a slave should say to her master. But it was also a concession… an admission that Roga had a power over her that no one else did.

Sylvendra could take whatever abuse an enemy threw her way, but she couldn’t take losing control of herself as she had beneath Roga’s touch. She couldn’t take being made complicit in her own degradation.

The revelation made Roga hungry to repeat the previous night, to own Sylvendra all over again, see her tears, make her scream. But she tamped down on the desire. With the elf in such precarious physical condition, any physical advance would cause her enormous pain. And Sylvendra expected pain, accepted it, clearly took it in stride…

Even now, the elf’s silver eyes seemed to have fixated on Roga’s bruised knuckles, still smudged with a bit of Madgur’s blood. Her vulnerable little body was drawn in anticipation, sure there was something left in those fists for her. Well, Roga hadn’t pressed into the ravine when Sylvendra was ready for her, and she wouldn’t assault the elf now, when she expected it. Any orc could give Sylvendra pain. The way to own the elf tonight was with the opposite.

“General Sylvendra.” Roga made her voice gentle. “What you endured today was a necessary annoyance.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?” For just a moment, the elf’s voice pitched up, into the neighborhood of hysteria. “An annoyance?”

“Call it what you like. It’s over now. Whatever those lesser orcs did to you, it doesn’t matter in this tent. What I do matters.”

“And…” Sylvendra swallowed, looking exhausted and small, “what are you going to do?”

“Whatever I want,” Roga smiled. “On the bed.”

The elf obeyed, careful to keep her weight off her bad leg but not letting it slow her down.

“On your back.”

Sylvendra looked like she wanted to protest but fear stopped her tongue and she gingerly did as instructed. Fear could keep a creature in place, like shackles. But shackles didn’t define ownership.

“What do you say when I give you orders?”

“Yes ma’am.” The elf’s voice had gone dead.

This obedience, while prompt and graceful, was not quite submissive. There was an air of pragmatism to it—a warrior ceding lost ground in the long game. Roga got the feeling that Sylvendra had run the numbers and determined that she couldn’t afford any more physical trauma; a wise call, to be fair. If she was already concussed, a simple slap could send all her faculties spinning and then she would lose the precious little control she had over her situation. She was still thinking like a general, seeking out what control she could and using it to her advantage. The presumption would have annoyed Roga if it weren’t quite so damn attractive.

Crossing the tent, Roga dug deep into a saddlebag for her stash of emergency remedies. Many she had held onto for years, in case she or Magdur was mortally injured in battle. But with the war for the Deep Woods at an end and the last of Roga’s enemies beaten and naked in her bed, the insurance was no longer necessary.

“I’m glad you didn’t scream, by the way,” Roga said as she selected a jar of ointment. “Having Magdur intercede would have been an unseemly taint on the ceremony. Since you were able to endure in silence, it’s for the best that you did.”

Roga returned to the bed with the jar and met the elf’s eyes.

“Besides, it was only right that you take your punishment in full.” Sitting beside the supine elf, Roga uncapped the jar. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Sylvendra studied Roga warily in the lantern-light. “Am I required to agree?” Her tone wasn’t mocking. This was more calculation. How much resistance could she hold onto without getting a mouthful of knuckles? After a beat of silence, she hedged her bets. “If so, then yes, ma’am, agreed.”

“Give me your left hand,” Roga ordered.

The elf did so, tense from her toes to the tips of her ears.

“Relax,” Roga said. “You’re not being punished anymore.”

A breath like a laugh left the elf and her smile—as cracked and cynical as it was—was magical. “Am I not?” she seemed to say more to herself than anyone else. “I’m still here.”

“Not everything ahead of you is punishment,” Roga said patiently, dipping two fingers into the jar. “In time, I think you’ll come to find life in my service very rewarding.”

Sylvendra lay her head back with a soft, “Hmm.”

“Something to say, elf?”

“It’s not my place to tell you what to think.”

Roga decided against an admonishing slap to Sylvendra’s thigh. The elf had been punished all day and it had made her obedient. This cynical compliance was a great improvement over her earlier behavior and for now, it was enough. For now, let the elf mope, and joke, and work on coming to terms with her position at her own speed.

Roga spent a long time on Sylvendra’s broken hand. Rubbing the remedy into the skin was quite the process when the slightest pressure might make the injury worse. Roga let herself enjoy the slowness, mapping the fighter’s callouses as she smoothed salve over that little palm. Though disturbing the facture must have hurt, the prisoner remained stoic as Roga finished with the hand.

Sylvendra’s wrists weren’t in much better shape, now bearing rope burns, the bite of metal, and two days’ worth of bruises. Roga made sure to apply extra salve to the broken skin before moving on to the lighter bruising on Sylvendra’s forearms. They were lovely forearms. Thin but shapely in a way that could only come from years of swordplay. Sylvendra probably didn’t realize that her tension made her muscles stand out so enticingly, paradoxically hard under that soft, bruisable skin.

It was only when Roga finished salving Sylvendra’s arms and moved to touch her breasts that the elf’s nerves got the best of her. Her arms jerked inward to cover her chest. Roga couldn’t judge her too harshly for the reflex—the damage to her tender little breasts looked quite painful—but it was the sort of reflex a slave had to unlearn.

“Don’t.” Roga’s voice was patient but firm, leaving no room for argument. “You are never to cover yourself in front of me. This body isn’t yours to hide or deny access. It belongs to me. Do you understand?”

Sylvendra’s eyes were daggers.

“Cross your wrists above your head. Move and there will be consequences.”

“Oh no.” Even as she uncovered her breasts, Sylvendra tried to cover her moment of vulnerability with sarcasm. “Not consequences.”

“Are you always this insufferable?”

Sylvendra pressed her split lips together. “Chock it up to the concussion, ma’am?”

Rather than start with the breasts, Roga decided to let the elf get used to the hands on her slowly and started with her feet. Sylvendra’s breath snagged and sped up slightly as Roga handled her injured ankle. Her breathing stopped entirely when Roga’s hands reached her inner thighs, where some orcs had clearly kicked her in anger. But Roga only salved the bruises with clinical efficiency and moved on up to the bruising on the elf’s sharp little hip bones.

The damage to Sylvendra’s stomach and ribs was some of the worst and, Roga realized, partially her doing. When she had salved the area up to the undersides of the elf’s breasts, Roga actually put both hands flat on the elf’s torso, thumbs on the sternum, and worked her fingers over the delicate rib cage, probing for fractures.

“They’re not broken,” Sylvendra said quietly and, with her hands flush to the elf’s chest, Roga felt the words vibrate ever so faintly against her palms. “I just bruise dramatically.”

Roga allowed herself a smile. “You certainly do.”

Sylvendra’s expression was cold and carefully impassive, but her heart betrayed her, quickening palpably against Roga’s right hand.

Roga decided to let Sylvendra stew on the smile rather than elaborating. So, without another, word, she turned her focus to Sylvendra’s tits—that honest little pulse fluttering fear beneath her fingers as she worked. There was a boot impression on Sylvendra’s left breast. Both her nipples had been twisted by cruel hands through the fabric, leaving concentrated bruises on the flesh around them. Roga took her time rubbing ointment into them as Sylvendra stared hard at the canvas above, clearly trying and failing not to feel the fingers.

“Hands at your sides,” Roga ordered when she had finished.

The elf uncrossed her arms and gingerly moved them to her sides as ordered.

“You’re being very good,” Roga observed. “It’s nice, but I wonder if it will last after you’ve regained enough strength to take a punch.”

“That will be a while, ma’am, even at the rate I tend to heal. You have time to wear me down.”

“Ah, if only,” Roga mused, rubbing a line of ointment over a cut on Sylvendra’s beautifully pronounced clavicle. “But I need you able to walk tomorrow and, more self-indulgently, I don’t like seeing any marks but mine on your body.”

Sylvendra’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Tomorrow? But—”

“This is a magic remedy, pretty thing. So long as you rest for the next twelve hours, it will heal all flesh wounds and broken bones.”

“But that’s impossible. Only the brindled fae know how to make remedies like that.”

“The brindled fae are all slaves now,” Roga said.

Sylvendra fell abruptly quiet, her expression shuttered.

“No need to look so down,” Roga said earnestly. “The brindled fae are quite happy under the empire.”

“Happy, are they?”

“Yes,” Roga responded. “Now that they’ve accepted their place.” She didn’t push her luck by stroking the elf’s cheek or petting her hair. Sylvendra would come to accept too, in time; it would just take patience. Instead, she gave another order: “Lift your head.”

Sylvendra’s gaze had turned to cold steel again. For the first time that night, Roga was sure the elf was going to disobey outright. But after a moment of that frightening glare, pragmatism won out, Sylvendra averted her eyes, and gingerly lifted herself up on her elbows.

“Good girl,” Roga said and watched the words crush her captive.

The misery on the elf’s face was so raw that Roga proceeded more slowly than she had intended. Very gently, she removed Sylvendra’s collar, exposing the welts left where she—and it seemed, quite a few orcs—had yanked too hard. It peeled from the skin sticky with blood that had oozed free even after Sylvendra’s wash in the barrel.

“You’ll put this back on in the morning,” Roga said, laying the collar beside her.

She even got a quiet, “Yes, ma’am,” as Sylvendra lay back and bared her throat to her captor’s hands. Her sharp eyes had gone sightless and sad, staring past Roga at the canvas and through it. Roga had gone and depressed her again—not that that should matter; it _didn’t_ matter. If anything, Roga was pleased that she could so handily knock the spirit out of her prisoner. But she was still oddly disappointed to see it go.

Sylvendra stayed still as Roga daubed salve around her neck, eyes, and split lips, then softly rubbed it in. When that was done, Roga took the elf’s little chin between her thumb and forefinger and said, “Look at me.”

Gray eyes met hers, carefully emotionless.

“Anywhere else it hurts?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Ah, but you shouldn’t lie.” Realizing she had forgotten one last area, Roga brushed the elf’s hair back to expose her ears.

“They’re fine,” Sylvendra said with a wince.

“You only say that because you can’t see them,” Roga chuckled, dipping her fingers into the jar one last time.

Magdur and many other female orcs grew their fingernails out to claws they could use to tear out eyes and throats in the heat of battle. Roga preferred her fists and so had always kept her nails trimmed back. This kept her from punching holes in her own palms and also meant she could run an ointment-covered fingertip through the grooves of Sylvendra’s ear without damaging the tender cartilage.

The pain should not have been intolerable but Sylvendra jerked and seemed to have trouble holding still as Roga took the tip of her ear between her fingers and rubbed the ointment in.

“Sensitive ears,” Roga observed and tucked the information away for later.

Sylvendra blinked, a contemplative expression returning to her face.

“What is this, General Roga?”

“What is what?”

“You could have had me tend to my own injuries. I gather that you like touching me, but this wasn’t…” Sylvendra’s attempt to treat the subject objectively faltered as her cheeks colored slightly beneath the bruises. “Is there something you enjoy about this?”

The elf’s intention was obvious; chock that up to the concussion, perhaps. Roga was learning things about her captive, her strengths, her weaknesses, what made her flinch. The fighter in Sylvendra wanted to level the playing field. But that wasn’t how this worked.

Instead of answering, Roga said, “Sit up.”

As Sylvendra struggled upright, Roga revisited her remedies bag, selected a capsule, and dropped it into the tankard of water the slaves had left on her table. Silver eyes tracked movements warily as she took the tankard to the bed and shoved it at her prisoner.

“Drink.”

The elf eyed the vessel as if pondering refusing. After a beat, she seemed to realize that resistance would accomplish nothing—Roga could force her to drink, which would be a deeply unpleasant experience. Glaring, she snatched the tankard and downed it in a respectable few gulps.

She was such a small creature, the drowsiness seemed to take her immediately. “What… what was… in…?” She lost the end of her sentence as those ever-sharp eyes lost their focus.

“Lie down.” The order came a moment too late, Sylvendra swayed and started to fall backwards. Roga darted in and caught her by the back of the neck before she could hit the bed too hard and jostle her broken bones.

“Easy, soldier.” Taking the tankard from Sylvendra’s loosening grip, Roga lowered the elf slowly to the bed. “Easy.” Sylvendra was unconscious by the time her head had settled onto the pillow.

Stepping back, Roga savored this picture of proud Sylvendra— _No_ , she caught herself. _Not Sylvendra._ _Elyon_. Surnames were for elven generals, not slaves. Roga could scarcely expect the elf to accept her new status while her master still thought of her as an enemy combatant. Even if Roga rather enjoyed her combative spirit. _Elyon_ was stunning this way, spread out on her captor’s bed in absolute vulnerability, riddled with violet bruises, every part of her marked in well-deserved punishment, her naked skin aglow with the fae remedy at work.

But it was a deceptive softness.

Beneath the soft skin and quiet obedience was a creature who cut down orcs like a reaper in wheat, who had withstood a victory ritual without so much as a yelp of distress. Roga had no delusion that this night’s compliance would last. The elf was still strategizing like a soldier, a prisoner of war trying to figure her way out of a tough spot. Even in sleep, she seemed to hold so much tension in her little body: the agony of her defeat, regret for every decision that had led her there, a determination to get her soldiers out alive—as if any of them had a future outside the protective reach of the Empire.

Roga would have to break her of that line of thinking. It was going to be incredibly painful for the elf, but in the long run, it would make her existence easier.

“Sleep well,” Roga murmured, pulling the warmest furs up over her naked elf. “You’ll need it.”

 _You have time to wear me down,_ Sylvendra— _Elyon_ —had said, but she didn’t seem to understand that sustained resistance wasn’t something she could afford. Not if she wanted to keep her mind and body intact.

The elf needed to be broken hard and fast. For her own good.

↞✶↠

Roga woke before dawn and dressed.

“You didn’t ask me,” a low voice said in the dark.

The elf had sat up without a sound, a spirit-like apparition in the low light. Only her silver eyes were distinct.

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t ask me where to look for my scouts.”

“I thought I’d spare you,” Roga said honestly.

Elyon Sylvendra sat upright, her movement surprisingly fluid, considering that the remedy shouldn’t yet be finished mending her. “Spare me what?”

“I figured you’d try to strike some kind of bargain, perhaps ask me to let your scouts live if you told me where to find them?”

Elyon drew her good knee to her chest, looking slightly smaller than she had. “Would that be unwise, General?”

“It would be ineffective. You and I have the one agreement: the lives of your fellow prisoners for your obedience. The uncaptured scouts were never part of that.”

“But… if I—”

“Consider that you’ve already sworn obedience to keep your soldiers alive.” Roga said, tugging her forearm guards into place. “Say that I ordered you to tell me honestly where to find your scouts and then didn’t find them there… I would have to take it out on the other prisoners. I thought it kinder not to make you decide between telling the truth and lying.”

Elyon’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose that was _kind_ of you.” Her voice was bitter.

“We’ll have to work on that tone, Elyon.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Pardon?”

“We are not familiar, General.”

“Not familiar?” Roga chuckled. “You’ve slept in my bed twice now.”

“I’m your prisoner.”

“Slave, Elyon. You’re my slave.”

A muscle clenched in the elf’s jaw. “Don’t.”

Roga sighed. It was too early for this but she had been right. The elf wasn’t even completely healed yet and her rebellious streak was already back—not that it had never left. Sylvendra had just tamped down on it for a night in the interest of survival.

“If you object to your given Elvish name, I can address you as most orcs address their slaves. Would you prefer ‘girl’ or ‘slut’?”

Elyon didn’t answer.

“Well?”

“As you will, ma’am.”

“Right answer, Elly. You’re halfway there. Next, try not to sound so fucking sullen about it. I’ll be back before dark.” She turned, slinging her axe to her back. “Someone will bring you food around sun-up. In the meantime, rest, put your collar back on, and remember your damned manners before you speak again.” She turned to leave.

“There are three,” the elf’s voice said from behind her.

“What?”

“You’re looking for three scouts. Two archers and a spearman. They’ll have retreated to the deep cover on the western lip of the ravine. It’s not visible from most vantages, but there are small caves there. I wouldn’t pursue anyone inside but you can smoke them out.”

Roga turned to meet the elf’s eyes. “Are you absolutely sure of that?”

“Positive.” Elyon held her gaze. “Ma’am.”

“You’re aware that I’m going to kill them?”

“I’m not stupid.” Elyon’s face twisted slightly in a snarl. “They’ll be starving and mourning the rest of us. Just…” The elf looked down and pulled her knee in a little closer. “Make it quick.”

“Ah, Elly. Do you think it _wise_ to tell me how to do my job?”

A small fist clutched the furs in rage. “Please.”

 _Make it quick._ It wasn’t an unreasonable request. If Elyon had phrased it as a request to begin with, Roga might have been inclined to oblige. But the elf had been defiant, and Roga had given her quite enough leeway. Now, it was time for a hard lesson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh, I probably could have edited this chapter down a few hundred words, but I was getting bored with this part of the story and decided I’d rather post it and be done. Sorry if it dragged.
> 
> We’ve also hit the stage of world-building where I start pulling magical creatures out of thin air for no reason, so excuse the lagosa and brindled fae. For those who like their unoriginal fantasy etymology: lagos is Greek for ‘hare’ and brindled just means stripy like a tabby cat (maybe casually ripped off from GRRM’s Brindled Men of Sothoryos, but if the Rip-Off Police are coming, George is definitely arrested first for borrowing the entirety of Western canon).


	6. The Hard Lesson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, slowly, we burn on.

Elyon stared down the collar for a long time, her ankles crossed and knees pulled up to her chest in contemplation.

Why did she somehow feel more naked now than she had after any of the rape? Her skin felt wrong, too smooth. It seemed that fae remedy had done more than just mend her bones and blood vessels; it had _reversed time._ Running her fingers over her sides, Elyon realized that her scars were gone. The one she had gotten falling from a tree when she was small, the one below her last rib from when her sister had slipped during training, the one a near miss had left through her eyebrow during her first battle. She felt erased. Replaced by this new Elyon of Roga’s making. A slave, not a soldier. If she put that collar with her own hands, that new Elyon would slide into place and the soldier would be gone.

She couldn’t do it.

She did however help herself to a deerskin blanket because damn it if she was going to walk around naked, even in the relative privacy of a tent. She didn’t look at the orc who brought her meal. She had a dim recollection of him visiting the victory post, his boot heel driven hard into her breast, rough words as he forced himself into her mouth—something about her killing his older brother. Addressing him could only end poorly for them both, so she turned away as he set the platter down hard and said, “Breakfast, whore.”

Elyon didn’t flinch at the sound, didn’t lower her head or drop to her knees. She simply stood with her back to him, blanket clutched around her body. If he wanted to strike out at her that was fine. She wasn't afraid. He growled low in his throat like he was thinking about it, but after a moment, he turned in a shuffle of leather and armor. Elyon waited until those bruising boots had left the tent to approach the meal. Remembering his anger from the previous day, the thought crossed Elyon’s mind that the food could be poisoned. Then she considered that, despite all that rage, not one of the orcs had taken it upon themselves to kill her at the victory post, where a simple ‘accident’ would have been so easy. They feared Roga too much. So, she ate without worry.

When the rice and venison were gone, Elyon fidgeted, then paced, feeling sick. It wasn’t the food or the memory of the victory post that had her stomach turning, trying to reject precious meal. Yes, the post had been nightmarish, but the thing that had crawled beneath her over-healed skin and lodged there wasn’t the repeated mouth rape; it was Roga. The memory of powerful, bone-crushing hands moving so carefully over her bruises.

Maybe Elyon found it a little insulting that her captor hadn’t done anything to break her down further after the ritual, the presumption that she was somehow too weak to take it. Why did the orc have to be so _tender_ in between the choking, punches to the gut, and attempted drownings? It was disarming—enraging—in a way Elyon didn’t know how to handle.

So, instead of handling it, she wandered the tent, looking through Roga’s belongings—because if Roga was going to pick at the fabric of her soul, well she was going to return the favor. She might have been nervous that she would be caught, but she had done her share of spying and knew how to reset a room to make it appear undisturbed. Roga’s equipment turned out to be disappointingly mundane; daggers, sword oil, whetstone, riding tack, changes of clothing, medical supplies… A spy would have found a similar—if elf-sized—stash in Elyon’s tent.

The war room was more interesting. Elyon couldn’t read Orcish, rendering most of the notes meaningless to her, but months of maps clearly showed Roga’s strategy in these final days of the war. It was pragmatic. Elegant. Ruthless. Elyon would have admired the genius of it if it hadn’t spelled the end for the elves of the Deep Woods. Rather like she would have admired Roga’s raven braids and goddess-like muscles, if… well…

The sound of footsteps outside the tent gave Elyon enough time to back an innocent distance away from the weapons rack but not quite enough for her to retreat from the war room unnoticed. Roga pushed into the tent in full armor, spattered with blood, skin flushed to a deep gray from hours of hard riding. She was back early, and there was only one reason she would be back early, Elyon realized with a slow sinking in her gut… the excursion had been a success.

“Elf,” she addressed Elyon coldly. “I believe I told you not to cover yourself.”

Elyon didn’t drop the blanket. “I was cold.”

“And your collar?” The orc took a step forward.

Elyon didn’t give ground. “It’s on the bed.”

“You know, Elyon.” Roga slung her axe from her back and set it on the table with a heavy clunk of metal. “Before you raised the subject of your scouts, I was fully intending to kill them quickly. Frankly, I’m sick to death of this part of the woods. Anything to finish off this war and get on the road, but you seem determined to test me.”

Elyon’s skin went cold, her insides clenched in horror. “What did you do to them?”

“What were you told about covering your body in front of me?" Roga returned, eyebrows raised in impatience. "What were you told to do with your collar? What were you told about taking that tone with me?”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, I’ll spare you the details and let you use your imagination. The little one endured the longest. I’ve tortured rock demons who didn’t last that long with both arms and legs torn off.”

“You…” Elyon’s head spun, her vision fuzzed. “You _tortured them to death?”_ The hiss behind her teeth broke into a roar. “Because I didn’t use the right _tone!?”_

“I did.”

Roga was going to die. That was Elyon’s last fully formed thought before rage drove logic from her mind.

↞✶↠

Roga had miscalculated.

Sure, she had expected Elyon to be upset. She had even prepared for that displeasure to turn to anger, perhaps a largely one-sided fistfight. She hadn’t expected the elf to snap into battle mode quite so fast. The blanket dropping from Elyon’s shoulders was all the warning Roga got—and it hadn’t hit the ground before Silver Arrow was sprinting for the weapons rack.

The elf was ludicrously fast but Roga was closer to the rack and had the longer stride. She intercepted Elyon before the elf could reach her greatsword. But like lightning, Sylvendra changed directions, jigging sharply to the left. Roga realized that the dash for the weapons rack had been a feint too late; Elyon had already reached the table and turned to face her captor, Roga’s two-headed battle axe gripped in both hands.

“I understand that you’re upset,” Roga said, “but let’s not be ridiculous, Sylvendra.”

She could see Elyon’s naked muscles standing out under the weight of the axe. That she could lift it at all was a feat, but Roga doubted very much that she could wield it in combat.

“Put the axe down,” she ordered, though she secretly hoped that Elyon was past obedience. This had the potential to be very entertaining—and just dangerous enough to be interesting. “Did you not hear me, slave? I said—”

Elyon came at her. _Alarmingly_ fast.

Roga just had time to snatch a goblin saber from the rack and get it between her and her opponent. The forearm-length weapon was woefully insufficient to parry a stroke of Roga’s axe—which the elf had inexplicably managed to swing with respectable force. Steel met steel in an electrifying clang, the goblin saber snapped off at the hilt, and it was only a quick backstep that saved Roga’s guts being spilled by her own damn weapon.

The axe should have been far too heavy for Elyon, but Roga should have considered that the elf’s oversized sword was also ‘too heavy’ for a creature her size by the standards of the average fighter. Elyon Sylvendra was simply not average. She was a genius. There was that flawless economy of movement, every muscle engaged from the tips of her toes, to her shapely calves, to her tight stomach, to those stunningly toned little forearms.

Gorgeous.

That movement had captivated Roga beyond all sense on the battlefield, with the elf in full armor. With her totally naked, every one of those wiry little muscles strung tight, every glinting syllable of quicksilver poetry on display… well, it was the hottest thing Roga had ever seen. And the distraction very nearly cost her her life in the ensuing clash.

Sylvendra’s strokes didn’t have the force of Roga’s, but the formidable heft of the axe alone was enough to break the second goblin saber as soon as Roga drew it, followed quickly by the dryad queen’s spear. The twisted wooden weapon—infused with a remnant of Queen Naiyera’s green magic—released a shockwave as it broke, disturbing the tent canvas and knocking both women back several paces. Thus far, Roga had managed to keep herself between Elyon and the weapons rack, but she was fast running out of defenses.

None of the weapons on the rack were sturdy enough to stand up to a direct blow from Roga’s axe save the troll’s mace and Sylvendra’s own greatsword. But the sword was such a lovely piece of elven craftsmanship; Roga didn’t want to risk damaging it… and she did enjoy a challenge.

As Elyon reset her stance, visibly taxed from wielding the orc-sized axe, Roga lifted the troll’s mace from its holder. The weapon’s spiked head alone weighed half as much as Roga’s body. It had taken a special smith to craft a rack that could hold it without breaking.

Elf and orc faced each other, both with weapons several times too heavy for them. Roga let Elyon come to her, bringing all that raw rage to bear. The crash of axe against mace shook worse than any magical shockwave. The impact, which reverberated painfully through both Roga’s forearms, was too much for any elf to withstand. The axe went spinning from Elyon’s grip into the legs of the war room table—and through them. As wood splintered and the table collapsed, spilling maps and candles, Roga rounded on the unarmed elf.

“You like my weapons, sweetheart? Try this one.” Shifting the troll’s mace to a horizontal position, she tossed it to her opponent.

Being the Silver Arrow, Elyon caught it; being an elf, she immediately toppled backwards under its weight.

There was a thud that shook the earth as the mace’s head and pommel hit the dirt, pinning one helpless elf beneath the shaft. As Roga had expected, the resting weapon left just enough space for the elf’s neck between the shaft and the ground. No room for Elyon to jimmy her way out. No way free except for her to lift the mace—which of course, she couldn’t. Roga didn’t think any less of her for it, but it was entertaining to watch her try. The elf’s rage was still hot, her pupils dilated, lips curled back to expose those negligibly threatening teeth, spine arched, wiry biceps standing out as she struggled to push the weapon from her neck.

Roga circled the elf with slow steps, admiring the muscle in those little arms as they strained against the shaft of the mace. Useless, of course. But quite pretty to look at. She could feel the elf’s eyes on her, angry and frantic, as she crossed to the weapons rack and ran a finger across her selection. Elyon likely assumed her captor was there to choose the instrument of her execution. Roga let her think that and took her time before settling on a two-headed flail she had taken off a demon lord in the Undarvi mountains. Heavy chains dangled from each end of a wooden shaft as long as an elf’s arm and nearly as thick. Perfect for spreading an insolent slave’s legs and keeping them spread.

Elyon’s legs were apart already, heels dug hard into the ground in an utterly useless attempt to give her the leverage to push the mace from her neck. Roga had dropped to a knee between her straining thighs before she thought to close them or muster a kick, and slung the flail over her legs, the shaft between her knees, the heavy chains on each end draped over each thigh.

The elf jerked against the foreign weight but Roga had already looped the chains around her slave’s knees, tangling the weights with one another so both legs were trapped. Escape wasn’t strictly impossible, but it would take a great deal of kicking and Elyon would soon be far too preoccupied for that. For now, the flail was more than sufficient to hold her legs apart.

The elf’s powerful core contracted as she tried to lift her knees, to at least get the bar of the flail between her and Roga. But Roga knelt on the shaft, leaving those thighs and abdominal muscles squirming in vain. A little masterpiece of fighter’s muscle spread out helplessly before her.

Roga indulged herself for a moment, rubbing her hands over the milky soft insides of Elyon’s thighs before her fingers climbed to the elf’s cunt and spread the labia. The little opening flexed, begging for Roga’s touch even as the elf’s mouth growled, “Fuck you!”

Back to those coarse attempts to cover her weakness, Roga noted. But she had learned the elf’s buttons, and she played her like a bard at his instrument, building in rhythmic measures straight to the crescendo. Working methodically with her fingers, Roga had to resist the urge to use her tongue; the elf could have that when she deserved it. And it wasn't as though Roga need her tongue to get the unwilling slave dripping wet.

“Stop it!” Elyon roared, chains rattling violently as she tried to kick free of the flail. “Stop!”

That was when Roga stood, fingers wet with the elf’s arousal, and reached for Orcsbane.

Elyon stilled. Her gray eyes went wide as Roga lifted the sheathed greatsword from the rack and she suspected the orc’s intentions.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“You thought it would be fun to use my favored weapon against me,” Roga said, settling between Elyon’s pale thighs and enjoying the dawning horror on her face. “Fair enough. I’m just returning the favor.”

“No…” The elf’s voice had pitched up in panic. “No! Don’t!”

The rounded pommel on Orcsbane was nothing to the spiked, fist-sized monstrosity at the end of the troll’s mace, but Roga decided it would be sufficiently punishing for such a soft, tight, little cunt.

“St-stop!” Elyon’s voice broke as Roga nudged the butt of the greatsword between her labia. “You can’t!”

"Relax and take your punishment, sweet thing. It'll go down easier."

"No!" Elyon was in full panic, her lightning hands alternately grabbing at the mace shaft and scrabbling at Roga's knuckles, which she couldn't properly reach while pinned back against the ground. "Stop it! Stop!"

Ignoring the slave’s insolent protests, Roga lined up the handle and _pushed_.

“Nn— _aaghh!”_

The weapon went in hard, despite the wetness. The little general was deliciously tight and, true to form, fought the invader’s advance at every centimeter. But much like elves trying to stop a force of orcs, the resistance was doomed. Elyon clenched against the intrusion, struggled around it, and then, unwillingly, swallowed it as the pommel slid home. She arched back with a groan of denial as her cunt consumed the end of her own sword. She stayed there, shuddering in resistance and Roga allowed her that moment to adjust. Then pushed the sword in further.

“No!” Elyon whimpered, her thighs squirming uselessly in their chains.

As the sword handle pressed deeper, her resistance waned. Helpless to stop the intrusion, she was forced to focus on accommodating it.

Roga should have made her take the whole grip, all the way to the guard. But she worried that the inflexible metal might kill the soft creature and stopped halfway down. As it was, Elyon was gasping, clutching the shaft of the mace for dear life and blinking back tears. Roga gave the clitoris a sound flick and the elf let out a clipped moan, her quim flexing and squirming around the sword handle.

"There." Standing, Roga looked down at her elf where she lay, flushed like a whore, pinned beneath a weapon she was too weak to lift, impaled on her own sword. "Isn't that better?"

Elyon bared her teeth as if to throw back something defiant—

Roga kicked the sword handle and the snarl turned to a high yelp.

“I think this is a good way for you to cool down and remember your place… while I decide what to do with your soldiers.”

↞✶↠

Elyon couldn’t reach the sword handle to push it out of her. She couldn’t lift the mace from her neck and trying only made her cunt tighten on Orcsbane. In the end, she gave up and put her hands over her face. The shame of defeat—her _second_ defeat—at Roga’s hands was nothing to the shame still pulsing hot and wet around the greatsword’s grip. And neither held a candle to the crushing shame of having lost control.

_Elyon, you miserable creature, how did you let this happen?_

She had surrendered her dignity to an orc, let herself be collared, beaten, raped, all for what? So she could immediately get her soldiers killed through her anger and pride? Roga should have kept pushing. She should have fucked Elyon with every weapon on the rack until one of them killed her.

 _It’s the slow, demeaning death you deserve,_ she told herself. _You’ve trained to be strong and in control your whole life. How do you lack the strength and control for this?_

A more forgiving voice might have pointed out that no one had ever demanded this kind of strength of Elyon. It was always ‘be unshakable, Elyon, uncompromising, unrelenting.’ No one had ever asked her to surrender control.

Her own ruthless mind hissed, _lots of creatures know how to submit._ Fuck, when Elyon had been small, back before every elf under the canopy had been conscripted, her family had had servants who managed ‘yes, Master’ and ‘yes, Mistress’ without flying into a murderous rage. Yet the great Elyon Sylvendra had failed at it when her people needed her.

She dug her fingernails into her scalp until they drew blood—and that was before the screams hit her ears. _Elves’_ screams, from the other side of the camp. Her first impulse was to move, to do _something_ to protect her soldiers but the bar at her throat and the sobering weight of Orcsbane in her cunt kept her pinned to the ground, punishing the movement. Her hands moved to her ears but no matter how hard she pressed, her hearing was too sharp, the screams too piercing. And Elyon couldn’t hold back her weakness anymore.

Pathetically, she started to sob.

She didn’t know how long she lay there, useless and crying, as elves suffered beyond her reach. All she knew was that eventually, the screaming faded and Roga re-entered the tent, smelling of blood. Heavy boots came to a stop astride Elyon’s pitifully quivering body.

“Tears, Elly?” the orc scoffed. “Isn’t that a bit self-indulgent? Surely, your soldiers would prefer you actually protect them rather than cry for them after the damage is done.”

Elyon didn’t bristle. What the orc said was true, and Elyon deserved every ounce of her scorn.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said numbly.

“Weepy _and_ compliant.” Roga's heavy brows lifted in surprise. “Perhaps I should have fucked you with your sword sooner. Maybe we’d have avoided this.” She opened her fist and a handful of bloody scraps fell to the packed dirt by Elyon’s head.

Ears.

Half a dozen of them. Pale, pointed, and freshly cut, the blood still red and wet where the blade had separated them from the scalp.

The sound out of Elyon’s throat was one she hadn’t made since she was a child—a helpless, uncontrolled sob. New tears welled in her eyes.

“Before you indulge in another fit, that’s all.”

Elyon looked up at Roga and had to blink away tears to bring the orc’s expression into focus.

“That right there’s all the damage I felt like inflicting,” Roga said, wiping some of the blood from her hand on her cloak, “Six ears off six random elves. A few of them were quite loud about it, I’m sure you noticed.” She rolled her eyes. “But in Orn’s grand scheme, what’s the loss of one ear to keen-eared little fuckers like you?”

“You mean… you didn’t…?”

“I didn’t kill any of the prisoners. Yet. I certainly should have, given this behavior.” Roga gestured to the collapsed table and the weapons still strewn about the tent from their fight. “But hours of torture get tiresome and I’d had my fill with your scouts. So,” she shrugged. “I thought I would be merciful and give you one more chance to save those remaining elves.”

Elyon had stopped breathing. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Roga, who was suddenly the only thing in the universe. She was _hope_.

“All you need to do,” Roga said, “is show me that you can be a functioning slave. Submit, apologize, and beg for a chance to earn my forgiveness.”

Elyon’s chest swelled with a breath of desperation. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “General…”

 _Try again, Elyon. You have no pride here… you have no pride before her_.

“Master,” she amended, “I’m sorry I lost control, I’m sorry I fought you, and disobeyed, and talked back. I made a mistake. It won’t happen again. I beg your forgiveness—or—for the chance to earn it?”

Roga cocked her head at her slave and Elyon licked her lips, praying to any gods willing to listen, that they had been the right words.

“A distinct improvement…” Roga said thoughtfully. “Now, Elly, why should I forgive you?”

“I…” Elyon wasn’t sure what to say. She blinked, trying to think: _what does Roga want to hear? You're a strategist, Elyon. Think._ But in the haze of humiliation, and rage, and fear, she had lost her grip on logic.

“You have done nothing but consume my time and cause me trouble since I collared you. Why should I bother keeping such an unruly, ungrateful, dangerous slave?”

“I-I’m going to be better, Master," Elyon stammered—like an idiot. "I swear.”

“Really?” Roga took a knee over Elyon. “Because you swore to me yesterday that you would obey, yet here we are.”

“I’m prideful,” Elyon conceded. “I lack judgment—clearly. But I’m learning.”

“Easy to promise that, but you did try to kill me not an hour ago. What are you going to do to make that up to me?”

“I’m going to do whatever you say,” Elyon said, then added, “without complaint. I won’t talk back. I won’t use the wrong tone. I’ll remember my place.”

“And where is your place, elf?”

“Under you…?” Elyon said in a small voice, hoping it had been the right answer. “At your feet…? Wh-wherever you want me. Please… my pride is on the floor, Master. Please—”

“Alright,” Roga sighed and Elyon nearly flinched at the impatience in her voice. “You’ve spared your remaining elves for the time being. You can lay off the groveling; weirdly, it’s kind of a turn-off. For now, let’s just get a few things perfectly clear.” She brushed a knuckle over Elyon’s cheek. “Is it your place to contradict me?”

“No, Master.”

“Who gives the orders?”

“You do, Master.” Elyon was surprised at how easily the answer came, now that she had decided to let go. There was comfort in the simplicity of it.

“Who does this body belong to?”

“You, Master.” And she meant it. Right now, all that mattered in the world was saying what Roga wanted to hear—and meaning it, if need be.

Roga leaned in, her dark tresses fell forward off her shoulders, bone ornaments clicking among her braids like teeth in the night. Elyon let go of the troll’s mace, which she had been holding like a lifeline—as if keeping the weapon between her and Roga offered any protection—and lay the backs of her hands on the dirt on either side of her head, fingers open in surrender.

“Understand this, Elyon: you have absolutely exhausted your defiance quota for… well, maybe forever. One more slip-up and your elves are food for worms. Understood?”

“Understood, Master,” Elyon said, brimming with too many emotions for her chest to contain.

“Very good.” Roga favored her with a smile and something in Elyon spilled over.

Without thinking, she reached out and grasped the orc’s hand.

“Thank you,” she breathed, caught in this foreign surge of terror and gratitude. Roga looked at her in surprise and Elyon’s judgment caught up with her emotions. “Master,” she remembered and clutched the hand to her chest. “Thank you for giving me another chance. I know you didn’t have any reason to, so I really mean it… Thank you.”

Roga considered her with those golden eyes for a long moment and Elyon’s grip tightened slightly in nervousness. Finally, a half-smile tugged at the orc’s mouth and she sighed. “Orn damn it, elf… you are adorable. Did you know that?”

Elyon wasn’t sure what to do with that; she was confused by the warm glow it created in her chest.

“I had an idea how you could show me your obedience…” Roga’s hand moved between Elyon’s legs and her face came in close, golden eyes boring into Elyon, pinning her more completely than any weight. “Fuck yourself.”

“Master?”

“You say that you’re grateful.” Roga’s eyes were alive with the hunger of a predator. “And _Orcsbane_ here will come out easier if you’re good and wet. So, why don’t you demonstrate some of that gratitude by entertaining your master. Fuck yourself on your sword.”

Elyon blushed so furiously she could feel the heat to the tips of her ears.

“Well?” Roga rumbled.

Under that gaze, Elyon felt like there was no breath in her body, but somewhere, she found enough to whisper, “Yes, ma’am.”

Obediently, she started moving her hips. It was excruciating at first, until she found the right angle. And, even then, it wasn’t anywhere in the realm of enjoyable. Elyon had never found pleasure in penetration—whether by a male elf or a substitute for one—not that she had ever had the leisure time to experiment broadly. This hard metal was far worse than any organic cock. It had been painful going in and it was painful now, but if Roga told her to fuck herself and make it entertaining, then gods damn it, that was what she was going to do.

_It’s what you deserve._

Elyon was not getting wet, but why should that matter? Roga at least seemed to be enjoying the grunts of effort and clipped noises of pain as she tried. And hopefully, that was enough. It had to be enough. Elyon was so focused on rolling her hips in a way the orc might find enticing that she was utterly unprepared when Roga gripped the sword guard and moved it.

“Nngh!” Her hands scrabbled involuntarily against the orc’s, the mace shaft bruising her throat as she strained upward. “No! No! Please!”

Roga drove the sword in hard— _deep_ —and held it there as Elyon’s lips parted in an airless scream.

“I’m sorry.” Roga’s voice had gone low and menacing. “ _Who_ does this body belong to?”

“Y-you—Master,” Elyon choked, eyes screwed shut against the pain. “Please—”

“Who gets to decide what happens to it?”

“You.”

“And do you, slave, get to tell me what to do with it?”

“No!” Elyon opened her eyes to find Roga’s face heart-stoppingly close to her own. “I-I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

“You really want this out of you, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Elyon gritted out, too distressed to form a lie. “Please… ma’am.”

Roga was studying her with those intent golden eyes, plainly intrigued. “Elyon Sylvendra,” she said after a moment, “do you not enjoy penetration?”

“I…” Elyon’s eyes had started watering, a tear trickled over flushed skin back into her hair. “I’ve... never…” but the words trembled to a stop on her lips. This was too close. Too intimate. Even Elyon’s dearest friends and comrades had never known…

But Roga had to be obeyed. “Finish the thought, Elly.”

“I’ve n-never orgasmed with a cock in me…” Elyon stammered, blinking through tears of mortification.

“Really?” Roga said.

And Elyon was confused to find that, through the shame, there was a strange relief in the truth. “Nothing more than f-fingers… Master.” And with that, Roga held something Elyon had guarded from everyone for decades. It was a new level of surrender.

The orc’s smile widened, tusks gleaming white. “Well, sweet, you’re with me now.”

“What do you m—?” The sword moved and Elyon cut off with a high, fractured sound unbecoming of a general—but perfectly becoming of the pliant slave Roga was turning her into.

The orc had leaned in close, a powerful hand tangled in Elyon's hair. “I’m going to make you come on your own sword.” Roga’s breath was hot in her ear, that growl an electric shudder down her spine. Any protest Elyon might have made was lost in that slavish whimper as familiar callouses circled her clitoris.

She trembled with need. Her hands found Roga’s shoulders and instead of pushing against the conqueror, they curled into the seams of her armor, imploring where Elyon’s voice was still too weak to plead for more.

“You are going to orgasm for me, and thank me, and then beg me to put that collar back on you.”

A week ago, it would have been unthinkable. But Roga was right, Roga was everything, and Elyon did exactly as she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, question for anyone who’s read this far: do you have a preference between Roga’s POV and Elyon’s? 
> 
> For most passages, I know whose POV I want to use (and I’ve been trying to give plenty of the parts to Roga, since stories like this tend to focus on the slave’s perspective), but sometimes I’m on the fence and it would be cool to have a tie-breaker opinion.


	7. Drowned Fury

Roga didn’t bother putting the war room entirely back together when she had finished with Elyon. The fall of the Deep Woods was the end of the war and Roga’s cue to return to the capital. After tonight, she and her orcs would head home, leaving the heaviest of their supplies behind. So, rather than returning her trophies to the rack, Roga bundled them into their mastodon leather carrying case. The broken table and the majority of the maps could stay here to rot into the soil of what was now the Empire’s easternmost colony.

When the cursory tidying was done, the elf was where Roga had put her, kneeling in the private chamber, forehead pressed to the ground, hair falling around her all white-gold and slightly tangled from struggle. As Roga approached, Elyon’s fists tightened ever so slightly against the furs in front of her. Her shoulder blades tensed, growing subtly more pronounced beneath the skin. Other than that, she didn’t move.

“Alright, pet.” Plucking up the slave collar, Roga sat on the edge of the bed, facing her prostrate conquest. “You can sit up now.”

Elyon came to attention with a soldier’s discipline, spine straight as she settled her weight back on her heels.

Roga had never thought about the sheer amount of training slaves must undergo in the capital. Why should she? They were largely invisible, worth about as much attention as the furniture. However, it was apparent at a glance that Elyon lacked any such training. Instead of spreading her knees wide, she kept them shoulder width. Her hands rested on her thighs instead of folding behind her back. Her gaze was fixed forward instead of on the ground where it belonged.

The eyes were the one thing Elyon seemed to realize she had gotten wrong. “Sorry,” she murmured after a beat and lowered her gaze. The adjustment did little to change the picture. Her posture was still dignified, strong, unmistakably military.

Roga supposed there was time to correct that… but found that she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Was Elyon Sylvendra not perfect this way? All cracked pride and bound fury? Why keep a dog at your feet when you could have a wolf?

Roga rubbed the leather collar between her fingers and made no corrections to her prisoner’s posture. Instead, she crossed her legs, put the toe of one boot beneath Elyon’s downturned chin, and used it to tilt her face upward. “You had something you were going to ask me?”

Elyon’s eyes were still raw from crying but she had clearly taken the time on her knees to gather her composure. Her voice didn’t shake as she said, “Please, will you collar me, ma’am?”

“The collar is a mark of ownership and trust. Do you deserve that?”

“I’m going to try.” Her voice was soft but emphatic. Honest.

 _But it’s not good enough,_ Roga thought with a frown. _Not for tonight._

“You’re going to have to do better than try, Elyon.” A question flickered in the elf’s storm cloud eyes and Roga explained, “Tonight is our final victory ceremony before we set out for the capital in the morning. You’re aware that it’s customary for fresh captives to be passed around and used as entertainment at such a celebration?”

Of course, Elyon was aware. There was no surprise—just a deep, searing anxiety—in those eyes. So, Roga continued without waiting for an answer.

“Tonight, this collar would exempt you from such use. It would mark you as off-limits, my valued and protected property, not to be touched without my permission. Do you deserve that protection?”

Elyon opened her mouth, closed it again, bit her lip. “No, ma’am.”

At least, she grasped where she stood and wasn’t stupid enough to assume that a bit of groveling and one very pretty orgasm would get her out of it.

“Correct, my little troublemaker. You don’t. That’s why you’re extremely lucky that I don’t feel like sharing, so I’m giving this back.” She tossed the collar at Elyon’s knees.

The elf blinked down at it in total surprise. If Roga was honest, she was a little surprised with _herself_. Elyon _should_ pay for her disobedience with her body. Roga should let every orc in the camp rape her. But this new, possessive thing in Roga didn’t even want to entertain the thought. And she was the master, after all. Why shouldn’t she have what she wanted?

“You’ll put that on yourself and do everything in your power to deserve it. Fail in that and I will have no choice but to take it away and leave you to your fate.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is that what we say?”

“Sorry. Thank you.” Elyon took the collar in her hands, looking dazed. “Thank you, Master.”

She held the ring of leather for a long moment, staring down at it with strange misery.

“Well?” Roga prompted.

Elyon took a breath and held it, as if preparing to plunge into icy water. Then she set her jaw, squeezed her eyes shut, and went under all at once. In a single motion, she closed the collar around her neck. The latch clicked closed and she looked up at Roga with a drowned expression. Orn, she was lovely subdued this way, Roga’s bite marks standing out satisfyingly on freshly healed flesh. For a moment, Roga toyed the idea of having her serve at the celebration naked. But even that was something she didn’t want to share.

“Up now,” Roga ordered. “The festivities begin at dusk and you’re hardly presentable.” After rummaging in her side pouch, she produced a garment she had taken from Kordath’s tent. “For you.”

As the elf straightened up, Roga tossed her the rolled-up clothing. Elyon’s reflexes fired with their usual speed, her hands snatching the bundle from the air before it hit her in the chest. But there was a flinch-like quality to the movement that hadn’t been there earlier—before Roga had tossed an immovable troll’s mace on top of her. The thought made Roga smile in amusement as the elf unrolled the dress and looked at it with a furrowed brow.

“My idiot lieutenant, Kordath, was fond of taking war prizes roughly your size and enjoying them for a while before killing them. That’s by far the most modest outfit in his collection. Don’t worry,” she added, reading her slave's distaste. “He’s dead now.”

The dress was likely not what a prudish elf like Elyon Sylvendra would have called ‘modest.’ The fabric was just sheer enough to reveal the shape of the limbs beneath, the skirt only reached her knees, and the neckline dropped low off the shoulders. The only way Elyon could get it to cover her little breasts without slipping was to lace the bodice securely across her chest, creating an enticing line of cleavage.

When the elf had dressed, Roga gave her a wood comb—also taken from Kordath’s tent. “That’s yours now. Use it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Elyon’s hands went to work at the ends of her long hair, slowly working the tangles free, but her eyes gazed off at the tent canvas and through it. Blunt little elf teeth worried her bottom lip. It was plain that something still troubled her... but that was hardly Roga’s concern, was it? Ignoring the elf, she busied herself packing her saddlebags for the next day, discarding what she didn’t need and consolidating what she did.

She was nearly done by the time Elyon worked up the nerve for a soft “Um…”

Roga turned to the elf, who shrank, the comb stilling in her hands. “Sorry. Permission to speak?”

“Granted.”

“I-I’m not familiar with how these celebrations go... What do I do? Is there anything I need to know?”

Asking for a debriefing, still like a general. “A slave doesn’t need to know anything, Elly. She need only obey.”

“Right.” The elf bowed her head. “Yes, ma’am.”

A well-trained slave relaxed with submission, but Elyon Sylvendra was plainly as far from relaxed as a creature could be. The nerves rolled off of her to the point that it was painful and Roga found herself crossing the tent with a sigh. Elyon tensed but didn’t shy back, even as Roga reached out and gripped her upper arms.

“Alright, listen.” Roga squeezed those slender, well-muscled arms as her elf went rigid with apprehension. “The other officers’ slaves will be serving as well. All you need to do is follow their lead. I’m sure they’ll even be happy to walk you through the finer points of service if you ask.”

It had never occurred to Roga to worry about something so far beneath her notice as how new slaves learned the ropes. For the most part, it didn’t matter. Untrained slaves—those captured on campaign—rarely lived long in an orc war camp. They weren’t supposed to. But it all mattered now, suddenly. Because Roga really did want Elyon to live.

One hand wandered to the magically smooth skin of the elf’s face and her thumb brushed Elyon’s lower lip, soft, pink, and still faintly wet from the nervous chewing.

“The most important thing, Elyon, is that you remain submissive for the duration of the night. Understand that this is a show as much as the victory post. Only tonight, your obedience is the show. If you can demonstrate that you are broken, I need not break you publicly.”

“Demonstrate, ma’am?” Elyon said, lips barely moving against the pad of Roga’s thumb.

“Kneeling at my feet and accepting a few somewhat degrading orders should be enough to satisfy the crowd. But your complete obedience here is key. If I meet with any resistance—if you even glance at me wrong—I’ll have to put you in your place more actively and I don’t think you’ll like that. Of course, I’ll enjoy myself either way.” It was a bald-faced lie. Roga was not the slightest bit interested in sharing Elyon with the other orcs—but it was critical that Elyon think she was indifferent. If the elf didn’t fear, this was going to go poorly for everyone. “So, unless you’d like me to spread your legs in front of the entire camp and show them the noises I can wring out of you, I’m going to need perfect submission.”

Elyon’s face had colored in helpless anger but this time, she breathed slowly and controlled it. Good girl.

“What—” She stopped herself and amended her phrasing. “May I ask what ‘perfect submission’ will entail?”

Roga shrugged. “Whatever suits the mood.”

Elyon looked agonized.

“Orc parties have a flow to them, alright?” Roga continued, unsure why those large silver eyes compelled her to explain. “You never know quite where they’re going to go or what kind of show will be in order.” She could see how that was not reassuring and switched gears. “The bottom line is that you do not need to worry about where the ceremony goes. You need to worry about me. Attend me, obey me, and no harm will come to you. Understood?”

Elyon nodded and Roga noticed that, for all the elf’s alertness, a fraction of the tension had eased from her frame. “Understood, Master.”

“Good.”

“And… what about my sold—”

“I gave you permission to ask _one_ question, elf.” And really, why _was_ Roga being so patient with her? It was silly. “You’ve exceeded your quota. Now, shut up and do something with your hair.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Roga went to check on the job allotment for the next day with Magdur, leaving the elf with a wood comb and a few thin leather thongs for her hair. She returned to find Elyon tying off the end of a long but simple braid and let out a short huff of laughter.

“That’s what you’ve done with your hair?”

Elyon looked genuinely surprised at her scorn. “Ma’am?”

“I thought elves were supposed to be good at prettying themselves up.”

“I’m a soldier.” Elyon’s tone was almost defensive. Then she remembered herself, swallowed, and tried again. “I mean… forgive my incompetence?”

Roga let out another snort of laughter and Elyon pressed her lips together, seemingly unsure how to take her captor’s amusement—with fear, indignation, or contrition. She settled on a pouting somewhere between all three. It was maddeningly attractive.

“Come.” Sitting on the corner of her bed, Roga threw a cushion down between her legs and pointed to it. “Kneel.”

Realizing her intention, Elyon balked as if Roga had just ordered her to swallow a troll’s cock. “I’ll do it again,” she protested. “I know how to braid hair. Master Roga.”

“That’s nice. Get your undersized ass over here or I’ll tear your arms off.”

The threat—paired with a smile—was obvious hyperbole but it had the desired effect, reminding Elyon that she was in no position to argue. That if Roga really did want to tear her arms from their sockets, the orc would be well within her rights. The elf’s expression sobered, then went carefully blank.

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry,” she said and settled on the cushion between Roga’s knees.

“Now,” Roga ran a hand over the elf’s work—tidy and silky-smooth but juvenile in its simplicity. “What kind of braid is this?”

“A ‘keep my hair out of the way’ braid,” Elyon said quietly. A little insolent, perhaps, but clearly honest, so Roga didn't hurt her.

“And this is what you think when I say ‘do something with your hair’? Hmm?”

“I guess… I don’t _think_ that hard about my hair, ma’am,” Elyon said as Roga picked back through the braid undoing it. “It’s muscle memory.”

“I just figured, even a serious, uptight military creature like yourself would have played with hair at some point? Maybe when you were a little girl?”

“I was usually too busy training,” Elyon said and then, seemingly unable to help herself, added, “What? You and Magdur spend a lot of time braiding each other’s hair?”

“That’s _Lieutenant_ Magdur to you,” Roga said, “and yes.”

Of course, that was different. Orcs wove protective talismans and badges of strength into each other’s hair. Hair braiding was built into their everyday relationships from a young age. Roga started the four-strand braid at the crown of Elyon’s head without thinking. It just felt right. This particular braid was commonly worn by children, but it didn’t mean ‘child’; small Elyon might be but Roga wouldn’t reduce a former general that way. It meant ‘dependent’… ‘protected.’

Elyon’s hair fell so smoothly around her on its own that it would have been a shame to bind all of it up in braids. So, Roga tied off the protection braid near the base of the elf’s skull, added a few smaller braids on either side for intricacy, and then pinned them all together with a charm from her own hair. The mammoth ivory ornament bore Roga’s military crest—the double-headed axe—and one didn’t need a background in orc culture to tell what it meant:

_Mine._

↞✶↠

Elyon felt strangely light beneath Roga’s fingers despite the familiar—and rational—stone of dread sitting in her gut. The collar around her neck was an ever-present sensation, like Roga’s hand holding her beneath the water. Except now, Elyon wasn’t fighting. She had gone still and let the soldier drown, leaving behind this new Elyon who knelt, and feared, and softly said ‘yes, ma’am’ to everything.

The powerlessness should have been an altogether terrifying experience. But now that she had given in, there was more than terror in the watery haze of drowning. There was the feeling of Roga’s fingers as they drew a torturously gentle line down the center of Elyon’s scalp to the nape of her neck, gathering her hair as they went. It occurred to Elyon that the braids in Roga’s own hair were rather complex, with beads and bone charms woven into the thickest. She should have figured—no, she _knew_ —that those devastatingly powerful fingers could work the most delicate of operations. The tightening of her inner thighs horrified her for a moment before she convinced herself that it was probably incidental. _Definitely_ incidental.

But she still missed Roga’s fingers when they tied off that last braid.

“Much better,” the orc said and rested her hands on Elyon’s bare shoulders.

It was always dim inside the tent but cricket song and the crackle of campfires beyond the canvas signaled the descent of dusk in the world beyond. Orcs’ voices were gathering, growing raucous with the promise of excitement.

“Oh Orn, you’re not crying again,” Roga said and Elyon realized that she had started to tremble ever so slightly.

“No, ma’am," Elyon said, insulted but careful not to let it into her voice. "Just cold.” It was half the truth. Elyon _was_ cold, but she had the discipline not to let that shake her. Roga didn’t need to know that just the weight of her calloused hands on bare skin made Elyon shiver.

“You’ll live.”

“Ma’am?” Elyon turned minutely on her knees, touched one of Roga’s boots, and when she chanced a glance up at the orc, found a hint of a smile in those golden eyes. Elyon was still getting used to the idea that Roga found this charming—found _her_ charming, when she exhibited the qualities for which her own people would have scorned her: weakness, indecision, _submission_. But it was a fine line. _Lay off the groveling,_ Roga had said earlier. _It’s a turn-off._ So, Elyon didn’t cling to the orc’s leg, or press her face to the ground, or give in to the tremor threatening to shake her voice. She left it at a soft touch to the orc’s boot and a softer request. “Permission to ask one more question?”

Roga leaned back on the heels of her hands and studied Elyon, as if mulling the request. It seemed like an eternity before her shoulders relaxed into a sigh and she said, “Granted.”

Gathering a breath, Elyon turned to face the orc completely, though she stayed on her knees, her eyes cast down. “My soldiers will be spared the…” She glanced in the direction of the noise. “The festivities?”

“Some.”

Elyon swallowed. “Some?” What did that mean? Some of her soldiers or some of the festivities?

“But not to worry. As long as you behave perfectly, none of them will die.” Roga’s smile had taken on a subtle edge, the glint of a hidden dagger. And Elyon understood that this was a test. Roga was probing to see if Elyon would keep her temper and uphold their bargain—as she hadn’t earlier. “Is there a problem, pet?”

Elyon wouldn’t fail her people again. Gripping her rage by the neck, she quietly but decisively pushed it further beneath the water. “No, Master.”

“And she’s learning.” Roga’s smile spread into a genuine grin. “Up.” She nudged Elyon with a foot and the elf stood, feeling cold and exposed in the sorry excuse for a dress.

She was leashed again, though Roga had swapped the rhino’s lead for a thin chain clearly designed for the collar of a slave. Or a hound, perhaps. Was there a relevant difference? Like any good pet, Elyon followed her master before the leash pulled taut.

The center of the camp had been cleared and surrounded by torches that stained the night a sinister red. Magdur— _that’s_ Lieutenant _Magdur to you_ —was waiting for Roga outside, more sedate than Elyon remembered her. She was... _beaten_ , Elyon realized, the split lip and the swell of bruises, visible even on green skin in the low light. Elyon immediately lowered her gaze, hating how afraid she was that somehow those bruises were her fault. Hating that a simple collar meant that she had to fear the resentment someone like Magdur.

Then Roga’s hand clasped the base of her neck just beneath her collar and the touch brought her roughly out of her rage. A reminder of what really mattered. Magdur didn’t matter. Nothing did except Roga. As long as Elyon pleased Roga, everything would be alright. At least… as “alright” as things were going to get. And new Elyon— _slave_ Elyon—could settle for that. She could make herself settle for that.

Pulling Elyon close, Roga held the end of the chain up before her.

“No orc touches this but me, you understand?” she said. “Wrap it around your arm while you’re serving.”

Nodding, Elyon took the chain and wound it around her forearm from the elbow to the wrist. Closing her hand around the end of the leash, she found that she was thankful for it. The sight of the chain wrapped around her arm was an oddly helpful visual, reminding her that she had no free will here; she was just a prisoner, an object. The cold metal was something to focus on other than the night looming before her.

Roga’s hand on her neck steered her toward a row of tables where a team of iron-collared creatures were unstacking platters. Goblins, Elyon thought at first before realizing that they were too tall and had too much hair to be full-blooded goblins. Then she understood. These creatures were half-goblin and half-orc, the sterile offspring of goblin slaves.

“Go on,” Roga said, giving Elyon a push that was more encouraging than it was forceful. “Join the other slaves.”

Elyon walked a few paces in the direction Roga had pointed her and slowed, wary of approaching the strange half-breeds. But not one looked up from their work as she crept nearer. Their eyes seemed permanently fixed down, backs bent as they moved mechanically about their tasks. Most were taller than Elyon, though the miserable way they hunched made them seem small. Their skin was speckled and sallow, ranging uneasily between the albino of cave goblins and the darker gray-green of orcs. Their eyes, which should have held either the sinister intelligence of orcs or the dilated savagery of goblins held neither. Instead, they were sunken and seemingly sightless, like the eyes of long-drowned corpses.

Elyon had no love for goblins. They had fought her own people for territory in centuries past, before the orcs wiped their largest kingdoms off the map and sent them scattering into fragmented bands. In her lifetime, Elyon had known them as a dangerous pest and peril of the Deep Woods, where the odd gang still clung to existence, half-starved, happy to eat the unwary elf who wandered too far from camp. Still, there was something unspeakably depressing about seeing their offspring—the products of rape—collared and toiling, dead-eyed, for the empire that had enslaved their parents.

Would Elyon’s eyes go dead like that, she wondered, with time? This was followed by a far more terrible thought that made her chain-wrapped hand curl into the laces of her bodice at her waist… but no… Roga was female. And she wouldn’t give Elyon away to a male orc. She _wouldn’t_. Not if Elyon was good. Elyon _had_ to be good. Because she realized in that moment that she would kill herself before bearing a half-orc child to be taken away from her and subjected to this indignity.

She was so caught in her own horror that she didn't notice the air warm subtly behind her, and she started when a hand touched her shoulder.

“At ease, General,” said a guttural voice, and Elyon found herself looking into the face of a night terror. A _fire demon_ —red eyes like live coals, horns curled back through his braided hair, carnivorous teeth exposed in a smile. It took a moment for Elyon’s gaze to dislodge from those elf-eating teeth and register the steel collar around his neck.

“Y-you’re…”

“Azreth,” he said amicably and, when Elyon just stared, added, “I’m Lieutenant Magdur’s slave. She asked me to keep an eye on you.”

Elyon could only gape. Her parents had fought against fire demons many years ago, before the strange creatures had disappeared from the Deep Woods. Most thought them extinct, assuming they had run afoul of giants or frozen to death in the mountains. This one, at least, seemed to have run afoul of orcs.

“I take it you haven’t seen one of my species before?”

“I…”

“Thought fire demons were extinct?” he guessed. “I get that a lot. We were holed up in the Undarvi Mountains for a while, after your kind drove us from the Deep Woods.”

Elyon might have expected him to punctuate the words ‘your kind’ with malice; _she_ would have, if speaking to him of demons. But they came out innocuous.

“And then?” she asked since the demon did not seem to be angry with her.

“Then General Roga found my father’s stronghold, gave our forces a sound thrashing, and took the mountain. That was several years back… Orn, almost _ten_ years now. My father surrendered us—his children—in order to stave off the wholesale slaughter of our people and keep his throne. Though only as a figurehead.”

So, Azreth’s father—King Yrudath, if Elyon was remembering her history of Demon Lords correctly—had made his own compromise with Roga. He had just traded his children’s freedom instead of his own. _What a spineless sack of shit,_ she thought, _typical demon,_ but didn’t say as much aloud.

Instead, she asked “Are your siblings here too?” because if this camp contained not only many orcs but many fire demons, Elyon wanted to know before she got another nasty surprise.

Azreth shook his head. “My sisters are slaves in the capital. I had a younger brother who was given to a warlord in one of the northern territories, but I doubt very much that he’s still alive.”

“I…” Elyon was about to say ‘I’m sorry’ on reflex, but fire demons were old and bitter enemies of her people. Why should she be sorry? Did demons even feel about their families the way elves did? She settled on an awkward: “My sister’s gone too.”

“Ah well, such is the fate of all who resist the Empire,” Azreth said with a lightness that Elyon might have envied if she could begin to comprehend it. He paused at the expression on her face and _winced_. Who knew demons could wince? “Too soon?”

“Yes,” Elyon said icily because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Azreth had opened his terrible mouth to speak again when a figure appeared before them so fast that Elyon jumped—and there weren’t many creatures that could make her jump. It was a Lagosa. Another damned forest pest! Although rabbit-folk were known for stealing from elves, not eating them. Elyon had taken shots at a few of the fleet-footed things in her youth—typical target practice—but never hit one, and she had certainly never seen one this close.

The Lagosa’s dress—if one could call those few strips of fabric a dress—revealed a gorgeous body, buttery smooth skin the same hue as the silken rabbit’s ears protruding from her hair, full breasts, a little waist, soft curves all over except for the pronounced muscles of the thighs and calves, which were the secret to her ungodly speed. Her round eyes were frosted blue, bigger than any elf’s and set a little farther apart. A collar like Elyon’s encircled her throat, leather instead of metal, bearing the Orcish symbol that marked her as the property of an officer.

“Elyon Sylvendra…” she said in a wondering, hushed voice, as though afraid someone might hear. Her eyes had gone as wide as a pair of moons.

“Yes… and you are?”

“Shara-Lee.” Those huge blue eyes glanced to the right, then the left, as her ears worked double time, flicking this way and that in nervousness. When she seemed satisfied that no orcs were watching, she whispered, _“Thank you,”_ and pecked Elyon on the cheek.

The kiss was so sudden and tender that Elyon had no idea how to react.

“What—” she started but the little rabbit had already bounded off.

“Don’t mind Shara,” Azreth smiled and if Elyon could read inflection in his strange guttural voice, she would have said that he sounded fond. “She’s an odd one.”

“Why did she thank me?”

“Oh, I believe, you um…” It was Azreth’s turn to lower his voice, “killed her master.”

“Oh.” A smile tugged at the corner of Elyon’s mouth. And even though it probably didn’t make a lot of sense, and even though she had missed, she was sorry she had shot at those Lagosa all those years ago.

Azreth got a platter for Elyon and helped her pile it with the assortment of meats Roga preferred, then showed her where to refill the wine pitcher if Roga polished it off.

“She usually isn’t the heaviest drinker but she can outdrink anyone in the camp if she decides that’s what she wants to do. Best to be ready.”

Elyon nodded, still adjusting to the novelty of a fire demon speaking in full, coherent, _polite_ sentences. To hear the older elves tell it, Azreth’s kind were scarcely capable of stringing three words together, preferring to snarl, roar, and spit armor-melting gouts of flame.

“Forgive me if I’m overstepping.”

“What?” Elyon said blankly. It was more a reaction to hearing a phrase like ‘forgive me’ come from between those savage teeth than anything else.

“If I’m over-explaining,” Azreth clarified. “I don’t mean to condescend. My master just thought you might…”

“Be a stubborn imbecile?”

Azreth winced— _again_ , confirming that the first time hadn’t been a fluke. “Not in so many words.”

“No?” Elyon was guessing that the words Magdur used had been decidedly more colorful. Still, she grudgingly— _very_ grudgingly—appreciated the lieutenant’s decision to send her a helper. “It’s fine,” she said shortly. “You’re the expert on serving. Tell me what to do.”

“I’d say do as I do, but the general has to be served first. Usually, I attend her before seeing to my master, but it’s your job now.” He pressed a carved wood pitcher into Elyon’s hands. “Watch the general’s drinking horn. Refill it whenever she empties it or when she holds it up for more. If this were a military meeting, we’d step back into the shadows and stand behind the orcs until summoned, but this is a celebration. We’re part of the entertainment—you especially—so you’ll kneel at General Roga’s left hand in view of the camp and submit to whatever she does to you.”

“Right,” Elyon said grimly.

“Just make sure that whatever happens, you don’t spill the wine. She’ll use that as an excuse to… correct you.”

Azreth seemed to notice Elyon scrutinizing him in the torchlight and paused. “Something troubles you, Sylvendra?”

“You know a lot about General Roga, huh?”

“I’ve served in her camp for almost a decade,” he said, “and she’s the one who first broke me in.”

“Broke you in?” The wording wasn’t particularly unusual but the bluntness of it suddenly had Elyon on edge as she remembered the bruises on Magdur’s face, the near-rib-shattering smack of the Roga’s fist into her own gut the previous day, a rough hand around her neck, drowning her...

“I was the general’s gift to Lieutenant Magdur for holding the Wyvern’s Pass while she finished off my father’s forces. I wasn’t exactly tame when the general took me. I was… well, I was a fire demon, and you don’t gift an untamed fire demon, so…” Azreth tilted his head with a shrug that was startlingly—heart-breakingly—person-like in its resignation.

It was only then that Elyon’s eyes tracked downward, moving over a clavicle that appeared to have been broken and healed not quite right. There were marks on the demon’s chest as well, exposed by a loose-fitting black shirt that left little to the imagination. It looked as though someone had dug a dagger beneath that rock-hard skin and twisted and twisted, wrenching up layers of tectonic scar tissue where that shouldn’t have been possible. Fire demons were known for healing quickly, even growing back severed horns and teeth, so Elyon couldn’t imagine the effort and sheer brutality it would take to scar such a creature. The torture must have been continuous and barbaric to have stuck to his skin as it did.

When she looked back to Azreth’s face, those glowing red eyes seemed to read her thoughts.

“It takes quite a bit of work to break a fire demon.” He didn’t sound proud of it. “But elves are known for being smarter than demons, no?” There was that smile again, paradoxically sharp-toothed and amicable. “Let’s hope that pragmatism saves you some pain.”

“Az,” said a small voice, and Elyon turned to find the nervous rabbit-eared slave—Shara-Lee—at Azreth’s shoulder. Gods damn it, how _did_ she move so silently? “Master Yargai says it’s time.”

And she was gone again, darting off to retrieve her own wine pitcher.

“Shall we?” Azreth turned, motioning Elyon to follow.

But suddenly, Elyon could only stand and stare. The demon’s shirt exposed his back—which was an utter ruin of scar tissue. The damage to his chest had looked painful but this… this did not look like something a creature could survive. Not one with nerve endings anyway. And from Azreth’s grim smile, she was starting to understand that he felt pain in all its varieties as acutely as she did.

He looked over his shoulder when Elyon didn’t follow and sadness stole into those fiery eyes like an autumn chill. “Come, General Sylvendra. The masters are waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took a while and that it’s not edited super thoroughly. A lot of other things going on these days. And hey, more side characters nobody asked for! I do hope you guys like these two… not that they’re around a whole lot. I just like me my side characters.


	8. Somewhat Degrading

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken me so long to update! I'm back to work, family stuff has been kind of insane, and there were a lot of moving pieces in this chapter that made it hard to pull together. As always, excuse the inevitable typos and other errors.

When Elyon followed Azreth to a crackling stand of torches, four slaves were already there, all collared and scantily clad, holding wine pitchers.

“Shit,” one of them muttered, nudging her neighbor, “it really is the Silver Arrow.”

“Sylvendra, you met Captain Yargai’s slave, Shara-Lee,” Azreth said. “This is Captain Karrock’s slave, Clove,”—he indicated a wide-eyed fawn with a head of brown curls— “Major Djurska’s slave, Twig,”—a wiry creature who looked like he might be the offspring of an orc and some variety of strange antlered fae—“and Major Grun’s slave, Layene”—a moon drow with milky starlight eyes and skin the color of dusk. Azreth trailed off, a furrow creasing his stony brow. “We’re missing someone. Where’s Hemlock?”

“The feral dryad?” Layene said wearily. “Got herself another thrashing, last I saw. She’ll have to catch up.”

“Shara, could you make sure she does?” Azreth said. Shara-Lee had bobbed her head in a nod and taken off practically before he finished the question.

Roga poked fun at Magdur for fussing too much over the camp’s organization. Whether by extension of his master’s actions or by coincidence, Azreth seemed to have assumed a similar role among the slaves, checking that they were all presentable, ready to serve in the correct order… which, of course, put Elyon first.

“General Sylvendra.” Azreth motioned her toward the gathered orcs with a note of apology in his voice. “After you.”

Elyon strode past the fire demon, hoping her cold glare effectively expressed that she needed none of his sympathy. Every time she had faced orcs, she had done so at the head of her party. Why should this be any different?

Roga’s soldiers had arrayed themselves within the circle of torchlight. Most sat on logs or low stools but Roga was easy to spot, seated on a long raised platform alongside her six highest-ranked officers. Elyon wondered how the orcs had constructed it in such a short time until she noticed the seams and hinges that allowed it to fold up for travel. The platform was like their tents, easily folded up and transported in rhino-drawn wagons.

Azreth had referred to the path up to the platform as ‘the gauntlet.’ Facing it now, Elyon understood why. A hundred orcs sat between her and her destination and the moment the one sneered, “Well if it isn’t the Silver Arrow,” all those malevolent green and yellow eyes turned on her.

The Elyon Sylvendra who would have faced these orcs without fear seemed a million miles away. She had no sword now. All she had was her collar and Roga’s promise that it would protect her from harm. She wasn’t feeling optimistic as she walked forward, eyes down, but Roga’s power seemed to surround her like a force field. Orcs jeered, called her “whore,” told her what they’d like to do to her, spat at her feet, started at her with bared teeth in hopes of scaring her, but not one dared to touch her. She focused her eyes forward, didn’t flinch, and reached the steps up to the officers’ platform unharmed.

The only officer Elyon recognized on the platform was Lieutenant Magdur, seated at Roga’s right hand. She was fairly certain none had visited her at the victory post; maybe that was beneath them, which she supposed spoke to at least a modicum of civility among the monsters. She might have encountered one or two on the field but she would have needed to look more carefully at their faces to know for sure, and she was being a good slave, keeping her eyes down.

Roga’s carved wood chair was raised slightly above the rest, illuminated by an excess of raised torches. The extra light and elevation meant that the entire camp had a perfect view of Elyon Sylvendra as she went to Roga’s side and demurely filled her enemy’s drinking horn. Elyon focused on the dark stream of wine as it filled the hollowed demon’s horn to avoid the hundreds of eyes on her. Roga seemed to be the only orc in the camp who _didn’t_ look at her. Just held up her horn as she talked travel plans with Magdur.

“The Wyvern’s pass is a bad idea,” Magdur was saying tightly.

“It’s faster,” Roga said.

“With just us and the rhinos, sure,” Magdur protested. “With dead weight?”

Elyon had a horrible feeling that ‘dead weight’ meant the group of captive elves that was her only reason for continuing to live this nightmare of humiliation.

“Ah, the dead weight has legs,” Roga said and Elyon nearly jolted when a hand brushed her thigh.

“Yes, General,” Magdur shot back, “Short, skinny legs that’ll freeze off before we make it to Undarvi’s peak.”

Elyon wanted to snap that, with sufficient furs and footwear, her elves could cross the Wyvern’s pass faster than any lumbering force of orcs. She’d have bet money on it. But she clenched the chain around her arm and reminded herself that her tongue wasn’t hers to use. She could only bite down it, look pretty, and hope that Roga spoke for her elves.

Before Roga got a chance to say anything, however, the orc at her left hand let out an exasperated sound. “Do you two do _anything_ but talk about work?”

The speaker—Roga’s third in command, judging by his position at her side—was a terrifying specimen. Orcs were usually well-built relative to other species but there were muscles in this one’s gray-green arms that Elyon couldn’t even name. On top of that, his limbs were so long that all that muscle didn’t crowd his body enough to realistically limit his mobility. The perfect fighter’s build. Elyon would have enjoyed the chance to face him on the field—although, in this context, she figured she’d better stay as far away from him as possible. Even a casual blow from one of those arms would likely cave her skull.

“You should enjoy yourself, General,” he said with more warmth than Elyon was used to hearing an orc’s gravelly voice. “This is your victory celebration!”

“The victory belongs to the troops, Thragor.”

The orc—Thragor—looked rather like he would like to roll his eyes but had too much respect for Roga to do so.

Setting the pitcher on the table alongside Roga’s chair, Elyon navigated the gauntlet a second time to bring her master’s food platter. She kept her posture rigid, her expression fixed and neutral through the ordeal but she wasn’t quite able to tamp down on the shame and there was a terrible heat in her cheeks by the time she reached Roga again. Roga had already emptied her drinking horn and held it up for more the moment Elyon had set the platter on the table beside her. Like a good slave, Elyon refilled the horn before quietly dropping into her place by Roga’s chair.

On her knees, Elyon rested the pitcher on one thigh and unwound the leash from her arm. She wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to drop the end or offer it to Roga, but the orc spared her. Still not bothering to glance in her direction, Roga took the leash and pulled, making Elyon shuffle closer, right up to her knee.

“In front of me, sweet,” Roga instructed in a low voice. “Where they can see you.”

Everything in Elyon wanted to shrink into Roga’s shadow and vanish from sight. But there was no margin for error here, no room for resistance, so she crept forward like a trained animal. Several orcs chuckled as Elyon settled in front of Roga’s boots and tried to find a focal point that didn’t leave her hyper-aware of all the eyes on her.

“The new pet’s looking a little more docile,” Magdur said as Azreth poured her a second hornful of wine and knelt at her side.

“Of course.” Roga reached over and trailed her fingers over one of Azreth’s horns. It was barely a touch but the demon cringed. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” Her voice was its usual brand of amicable and threatening but the thing that chilled Elyon right to her marrow was the expression on Azreth’s face. The demon, who minutes earlier had been a reassuring presence, was a different creature beneath Roga’s hand. Quaking and subdued. She was almost surprised he didn’t let out a whine; he looked so like a dog, terrified of being kicked.

Elyon distracted herself by following the movement of the other slaves in her periphery and matching them to their officers. Clove with Karrock, Layene with Grun… Elyon committed each name to memory. If these orcs were powerful in the camp, she wanted to know who they were and learn what she could about them. Twig with Djurska, Shara-Lee with Yargai…

The captain called Yargai was the biggest woman Elyon had ever seen, standing taller than all but the most massive of the male orcs. She was brown-haired, her skin gray like Roga’s rather than green like most orcs’. Huge muscles bulged beneath her tunic, each bicep nearly as big around as Elyon’s waist. Yet she rested a hand on Shara-Lee’s head with supreme tenderness, scratching affectionately between those silky rabbit ears. Shara-Lee leaned up into the hand with something in her big blue eyes that looked disturbingly like love.

Last to the platform was Hemlock, the ‘feral dryad,’ who it seemed had caught up after all. Most of the officers’ slaves were ridiculously dressed in clothing that barely covered anything; this one was stark naked except for her collar. Elyon had always known that orcs sometimes paraded their captives around naked, but the reality of it was surprisingly jarring. The dryad seemed so vulnerable in this camp of bared tusks and leering stares, and Elyon was suddenly incredibly thankful for her too-thin dress with its tiny bodice.

Shara-Lee’s owner Yargai made a sympathetic sound as the dryad mounted the platform. “Still punishing her, huh?”

“Her pride bruises deeper than her body,” Thragor said. “She gets her clothes back when she’s good.” As cruel as the words were, he didn’t say them with any particular relish. If anything, he sounded tired.

Elyon had never considered dryads attractive and this lanky creature was no exception. All of them had a bark-like coarseness to their skin that Elyon found off-putting—though it was, in perspective, far less grotesque than Azreth’s volcanic rock-like body. Like Azreth’s skin, Hemlock’s was textured with damage, though her injuries looked painfully recent. The broad welts across her back and thighs were black and smelled of charred wood, as if someone had held a heated blade to her strange skin over and over… Maybe Thragor was cruel, after all.

The burns clearly hurt, but Hemlock was trying to walk as though they didn’t, a proud set her jaw—and that was perhaps what made Elyon’s eyes linger on this woman with an appreciation she had never felt for any dryad. Grit in the face of the unthinkable was something Elyon had always admired. That alone made a woman attractive.

Hemlock held that proud stiffness as she Thragor’s drinking horn and, now well behind the other slaves, hurried to get his food platter.

“She was a queen,” Magdur said and Elyon’s stomach turned over when she realized that the lieutenant was speaking to _her_. Magdur had seen Elyon’s eyes follow the dryad a moment too long. “A sorceress who ruled the Southern Wendwood for half a century.”

 _Queen Naiyera,_ Elyon realized with a terrible chill. Orcs often renamed slaves upon their capture—as if forest folk really gave their children hokey names like _Twig_ and _Clove_. She supposed Hemlock was an apt pet name for a former sorceress; modest but still dangerous.

“She had power you couldn’t dream of.”

Elyon wasn’t sure she was supposed to respond. She hadn’t been prompted to speak, so she opted to keep her eyes focused on the wood knot before her knees, her expression neutral. Magdur’s point was clear enough: even a queen bowed to the orcs eventually… so where the hell did Elyon get off copping an attitude?

“The ungrateful cunt is lucky Thragor wanted her, and lucky the general was kind enough to oblige him.”

Elyon resisted the urge to flick a glance up at Roga. For someone who had never kept slaves herself, Roga apparently gave extravagant gifts. Her lieutenant got the hard-broken son of a demon lord and her third-in-command got a _queen?_

“Hemlock is a handful,” Thragor conceded with a look across Roga—straight over Elyon’s head—at Magdur, “but a lovely handful.”

“If you have a tree fetish,” Magdur muttered into her drinking horn too quietly for Thragor to hear. The jab was hypocritical as well as petty, Elyon thought—considering that Magdur’s own slave was all but made of fire and rocks.

Hemlock returned to Thragor’s side and set the platter down with a terse, “Master,” that barely passed for submissive.

Her tone suggested that she would like nothing better than to have Thragor’s heart out, but a backhand from one of those powerful arms could probably break her weird little tree neck, so Elyon didn’t exactly blame her for folding to her knees.

Sliding a hand beneath Hemlock’s vine-like hair, Thragor rested a hand at the base of her neck and said, “Heal.”

A rune on the dryad’s collar glowed green. The dryad closed her pitch-black eyes and at the same time, the burned welts closed too, bark growing over them. The heavy metal collar around her neck resembled Azreth’s and Elyon realized that the device must serve to bind magic. Azreth’s likely prevented him from spitting flame while Hemlock’s prevented her from turning to wood or growing additional leafy limbs—unless the master allowed it.

“You’re soft on her,” Magdur frowned at Thragor, who shrugged, unbothered.

“I’m not a sadist.”

Ignoring the bickering between her lieutenants, Roga lay into the meal. At one point, she lowered a hand to Elyon’s mouth, fingers slick with meat juices.

“Clean,” she ordered, still not deigning to look at her slave.

Pride fixed Elyon’s teeth together, but pride was what had gotten over half a dozen elves tortured today. So, she forced her jaws open to take the fingers in her mouth. The grease and spices tasted fine, but the swell of jeers from Roga’s orcs created a burning, bitter tang in the back of Elyon’s throat.

Roga waggled her two fingers lightly against Elyon’s tongue, which Elyon took as an order. She wasn’t just supposed to kneel with the orc’s fingers in her mouth; she was supposed to clean them. Focusing on the blinding blurring light of one of the torches behind Roga, Elyon slowly worked her tongue around the fingers, sucked, and swallowed.

The trouble was that Roga didn’t remove her fingers once they were absolutely clean. They stayed, then slowly probed deeper. Orc fingers were long and at the second knuckle in, Elyon choked.

 _Don’t spill the wine,_ she reminded herself and forced herself to still, the pitcher clutched steadily in her lap.

The orcs laughed and Roga pumped her fingers a little deeper, catching Elyon’s gag reflex. Elyon’s body jerked with the involuntarily urge to heave, but she managed to keep herself from actually vomiting on her master’s hand—which she got the feeling was off-limits. The laughter grew louder, this time punctuated with crude remarks about how deep Elyon could or could not take it.

Heedless of the elf’s distress, Roga drove a little deeper. Elyon gagged and would have yanked her head back if Roga hadn’t braced a thumb beneath her chin to hold her still. She coughed around the fingers, convulsed slightly, but managed to keep her grip on the wine jug. She hoped gagging and pulling back didn’t constitute disobedience, because if Roga kept her fingers where they were, she was going to have to decide between jerking free and throwing up.

Just as Elyon was nearly ready to break composure out of sheer, primal self-preservation, Roga relented, easing her fingers back to the second knuckle and allowing her coughing slave a chance to breathe.

“Suck,” Roga reminded her calmly and Elyon, eyes watering did as she was told.

Closing her lips as best she could around the fingers, she hollowed her cheeks and _sucked_. With Roga’s knuckles hard against the roof of her mouth, worked her tongue over the orc’s callouses.

“That’s a good whore!” someone said from the crowd.

“Look how much she likes it!”

Elyon closed her eyes. _This could be much worse_ , she kept reminding herself. As far as Roga’s promise of ‘somewhat degrading orders,’ this was blessedly tame. Roga could have chosen just about anything to shove into any one of Elyon’s orifices for the entertainment of her troops; this was far and away the most bearable. And as long as Elyon made the show good, she hoped, it would _stay_ bearable

“Hungry, pet?” Roga asked after a time.

Since she didn’t withdraw her fingers, Elyon took it as a rhetorical question.

She was a little hungry, having eaten nothing since early morning… which still put her several days of starvations away from asking a damn orc for food. Her feelings on the matter did not improve when Roga cut a small piece of meat with her dagger and held it to Elyon’s lips. _No._ Elyon froze momentarily, her lips closed. _Gods, you have to be kidding me._ She would have preferred actual death by starvation to eating out of an orc’s _hand_.

_But this isn’t about you, Elyon._

Pushing down on her pride, she opened her mouth and endured a new onslaught of laughter and derision as she ate from her owner’s hand—like a favored dog. A few orcs even made mocking barking sounds.

Roga fed her a series of morsels as the night went on and Elyon was able to muscle past the humiliation by telling herself that it was only pragmatic to accept food—no matter how it was offered. She had no way of knowing how often Roga would feed her—if that would shift with the orc’s whims as many things seemed to—and Elyon needed to keep herself strong and alert.

There were rounds of songs and toasts, not unlike a celebration of elf victory.

As the night wore on, the festivities grew more raucous—and terrible. In the torchlight, an orc seized one of the half-goblin slaves, bent her over, and raped her with the enthusiastic encouragement of his fellows. Before long more orcs and unwilling half-goblins had followed suit.

Looking down the line of officers, Elyon saw that the orc call Grun had his hand fisted in his slave’s moonlight hair, driving her head down on his cock. He seemed to be the only officer publicly making use of his slave. Hopefully, it stayed that way. At first, Elyon though that Shara-Lee was servicing her master in a similar way, but upon closer inspection, the lagosa had just turned away from the festivities and pressed her head to her master’s thigh, ears flat against her head in distress. Captain Yargai’s massive hand covered her slave’s head gently but firmly, as if to block out the sounds of the rape, as the orc herself carried on an amicable conversation with Thragor.

Roga nudged a boot into Elyon’s shin and flicked her eyes to her empty drinking horn—which Elyon was supposed to be watching. Shit. How long had the horn been empty? Gods, Elyon hoped not long.

“Sorry,” she murmured and climbed to her feet to fill the horn. It was the last of the wine in the pitcher.

“Fetch more,” Roga said, lifting the leash to hand the end to her slave.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Elyon…” Roga pulled the leash slightly, making Elyon bend at the waist. “Perfect submission.”

“Yes, Master,” Elyon said, slightly confused. Was she being scolded for not paying attention to Roga’s drinking horn? If so, she supposed that was fair. It shouldn’t have been a difficult thing to stay on top of.

“Perfect submission,” Roga repeated, “or things could get much worse.”

With that, she shoved the leash into Elyon’s free hand and waved the elf away.

Elyon was at the barrel refilling her pitcher when Roga shouted something to the crowd. Elyon couldn’t make out the words at this distance, through the commotion of all the ‘merriment,’ but they sent up a roar of approval and excitement. It wasn’t until Elyon returned to the platform that she saw what the fuss was about. Five new slaves had been brought into the torchlit circle for entertainment. It had become difficult to tell one body from another with the orcs rutting into pallid half-goblin slaves and each other, but these new captives were easy to pick out for their size and distinctly non-green skin tones. They were elves.

Some of the youngest of Elyon’s soldiers.

She drew a breath of horror—but before that breath could turn to a sound, the chain snapped taut, yanking brutally at her neck. Caught completely by surprise, she stumbled. As she fell forward, the jug pitched from her hands. She managed to catch it by the handle before it fell to the wood, but not before half the wine had slopped out and onto Roga’s boots.

 _Fuck!_ “I’m sorry,” she tried. This didn’t count as disobedience, did it? Gods, she hoped not. “Master, I’m sorry.”

But Roga just smirked, took the jug from her hands, and said, “Clean.”

 _Oh_.

Gingerly, Elyon knelt on the wine-splattered wood before Roga, her back to the scene below. She itched to look over her shoulder at those five elves, but suddenly, Roga’s earlier warning made a new kind of sense. _Perfect submission or things could get much worse._ The only thing she could do for her elves was try to make Roga happy.

Gritting her teeth, she gathered her skirts to clean the wine from her captor’s boots. She had just leaned forward to start scrubbing when Roga interrupted coldly.

“No hands.”

The orcs near enough the platform to hear cackled and jeered appreciatively. Elyon could feel Magdur’s gaze on her, and Thragor’s—possibly even her own soldiers’—and burned. But the price of disobedience was too high. So, she dropped her skirts around her, placed her palms on the wood, and—Gods forgive her—lowered herself to lick the wine from Roga’s boots.

The grit was abrasive on her tongue and grainy in her mouth but not as bad as she might have expected; Roga struck her as the kind of soldier who kept her equipment clean and her boots were no exception. The heady sheen of wine overpowered any notes of soil or rhino shit and kept Elyon’s tongue just moist enough that she didn’t run out of saliva for the job. All things considered, the act itself was perfectly bearable. Harder to bear were the jeers from the orcs. Hardest of all was the sickly knowledge that her own soldiers were seeing her this way—or, if they weren’t, it was only because they were being used too cruelly for them to register their surroundings.

Elyon tried not to think about what she looked like, collared, on her knees with her ass in the air—because really that was the natural result of trying lick someone’s boots clean from one’s knees. Having decided that Elyon’s work was satisfactory, Roga withdrew her right boot and presented Elyon with her left. Elyon picked up a breathless grunt of pain from an elf and froze.

“Clean, slave,” Roga reminded her, nudging the wine-soaked toe of her boot into Elyon’s cheek. And Elyon went back to work because what else could she do?

“Good girl,” Roga said after a time and Elyon took that to mean that she was finished.

She started to lift her head but this was evidently the wrong move. In a single, brutal movement, Roga stepped on the middle of Elyon’s leash and hauled up on the end of it with her right hand. Elyon was yanked, face-first into the platform so hard that her vision when black for a second. Her immediate impulse was to jerk back upright, but Roga’s foot stayed where it was on the juncture of chain and collar, pinning Elyon down by the neck.

The position was incredibly painful and Elyon went prone, sliding her knees back to lie flat at Roga’s feet the moment it became clear that the orc was not letting her up. Trying to stay on her knees with her neck pinned down would do nothing but cause her injury and give the orcs that much more to laugh about.

Not that they weren’t laughing already—calling her a ‘tame bitch’ and a ‘good dog’—but Elyon understood with a sudden pang of revelation what Roga was doing. Somewhere off in the crowd, an elf had started crying. Roga was making obedience easy for Elyon. From this position, Elyon was physically incapable of resisting. If she snarled, the assembled orcs wouldn’t see it. If she raised her voice, a boot to the throat would quickly choke it out. And things wouldn’t have to get worse for the elves.

Unbidden, one of Elyon’s hands clutched at Roga’s ankle. In hatred? In thanks? Elyon wasn’t sure. The orc responded by removing her boot from the leash and placing it firmly on Elyon’s head. It hurt, the gritty sole crushing hard into Elyon’s right ear while her left pressed into the wood, but it was a kindness. It meant Elyon couldn’t hear what the orcs were doing to her soldiers. All she could hear was the clunk and thud of movement on the platform, the shifting of her own hair, and her own thunderous heartbeat.

It was there, prostrate under Roga’s boot, that Elyon realized something she hadn’t grasped for the entire day… Roga actually wanted her to succeed tonight. All that going on about perfect obedience. The orc didn’t _want_ to publicly punish or share Elyon, like she hadn’t wanted to leave her at the victory post. Roga was… _merciful_ really wasn’t a word Elyon felt comfortable attaching to an orc. _Possessive_ , Elyon supposed, and found that she was thankful for it. At the very least, it was something she might be able to use, with calculation and care.

Roga kept Elyon there for a long time. Judging by the way Elyon’s neck started to ache from the awkward angle while other parts of her had gone numb, it felt like an hour. Finally, the foot disappeared from Elyon’s neck and a yank at her collar made her choke.

“Up on your knees,” Roga ordered coolly.

Elyon obeyed, stiff from lying unmoving under the orc’s boot for so long. Immediately, her eyes flicked to the sea of celebrating orcs. It was a bad idea, she realized. Better not to know. But she couldn’t help it.

Gwynn was lying unconscious on the ground, her face and breasts splattered with semen. Either someone had knocked her out or just fucked her mouth so relentlessly that she had passed out from lack of air; Elyon had experienced both at the victory post, then shut down her emotions and moved past the experience. It was somehow much harder to accept it happening to Gwynn, who was a simple woman and a good soldier. Never the strongest, smartest, or most skilled. But she was consistent, loyal. She didn’t deserve—

Pain ignited the back of Elyon’s head as Roga hauled back on a handful of her hair, forcing her to shuffle sideways on her knees until she was in an apparently better position right between the orc’s legs. In the moment Roga had pulled Elyon’s attention from Gwynn, one of the half-goblin slaves had gathered the unconscious elf indifferently but carefully into his arms. Further out in the crowd, more half-goblins pulled Syrene, Faerun, Myadel, and Lylenna to their feet and led them back toward the cages. Elyon’s jaw clenched as a drunk orc gave Faerun’s ass a parting slap that made him flinch, but it was over. Thank the Gods. Roga must have called off the ‘entertainment.’

“Come on, General,” one of the rank-and-file orcs protested. “Let us have some more fun!”

“Oh, we’re going to have more fun,” Roga said and Elyon _felt_ the smirk in her voice. “Clear a circle.”

A shout of approval went up with the torchfire smoke.

“And to the winner go the spoils!” Roga bellowed. One hand lifted her drinking horn high while the other gripped Elyon beneath the chin, forcibly turning her face to the crowd.

The responding roar shook the night and the orcs shuffled eagerly into motion, clearing a space before the officers’ platform. Elyon didn’t understand what was happening, but if it had Roga’s soldiers this excited, it couldn’t be good.

There was a sharp clunk as Magdur knocked her hollow drinking horn into Azreth’s solid bone one. The demon acknowledged with a submissive nod and rose to fetch his master a refill.

“You too,” Roga said above Elyon.

“Ma’am?”

“More wine, sweetheart—since you spilled the last round.”

Oh. “Yes, Master.”

Elyon got to her feet and followed Azreth, winding the chain around her arm to keep it out of the way, as she had been told. ‘The gauntlet’ was easier to navigate with the orcs busy rearranging the camp, and Elyon was thankful for the chance to stretch her stiff legs. She caught up to Azreth as he reached the wine barrel.

“Demon,” she said and he threw her an incredulous look.

 _“Elf?”_ he returned. And Elyon supposed she had deserved that. “We can’t take too long chit-chatting. They’ll expect us back promptly.”

“Right. But just… what are they doing?” she asked. “What’s the circle for?”

“You don’t know?”

Elyon shook her head. She had heard a great deal about orcs and their depravity but none of those stories went beyond the victory post. No elf ever _lived_ beyond the victory post.

“The ring is for fights.”

“Fights?”

“Barehanded, one-on-one combat. Any orc who wants in can enter the ring at their own peril, but only the winner gets to _stay_ in.”

“Fun,” Elyon said dryly. Honestly, it _would_ have sounded fun if not for one particular phrase gnawing at her nerves. “And… the spoils the general mentioned?”

“Ah yes,” Azreth said grimly, as though he had been rather hoping Elyon wouldn’t ask. “The last orc standing at the end of the night gets to choose any—or all—of the losers’ slaves to have for the night.”

“What—?”

“We should get back,” he said and started walking. He had a long stride and Elyon had to jog—carefully, to avoid spilling the wine—to catch up.

“But Roga won’t… I mean… the officers don’t participate in the fights?” Surely, their rank afforded them the right to abstain with their dignity.

“Where do you think the spoils come in?” Azreth said, and it took a moment for the horrible truth to sink in. The officers were the only orcs who had personal slaves to gamble. If they didn’t participate, there was nothing to win. But the general herself surely wouldn’t…

“They’ll let the grunts fight it out for a while before they jump in,” Azreth continued. “You have to earn the right to contend with an officer.”

They were back among the orcs again and out of time for conversation. The first combatants were already in the ring, the surrounding orcs too busy drunkenly cheering them on and shouting bad advice to stop and harass a pair of slaves.

Roga was watching the fight with passing interest, which turned to Elyon as the elf approached. When Elyon made to refill Roga’s horn, the orc instead took the jug from her hands and said, “Down.”

Confused, Elyon obliged, sinking to her knees.

“On all fours,” Roga specified and pointed to the space in front of her. “Right here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elyon said and crawled into the uncomfortably visible position before her captor's chair.

“Don’t buckle,” Roga ordered and, before Elyon processed the words, slung her left leg onto the small of the elf’s back and crossed her right leg over it.

Elyon started slightly and then adjusted to the weight, her core pulling tight to take the pressure off her spine. So, she was Roga’s footrest now? She should have resented it—and did—but realistically, the position was fine, no more degrading than what she had already suffered and not overly painful to hold. Roga’s legs were heavy but by no means more than Elyon could handle. In training, she had held buckets of rocks, hung by one arm, and stood on one foot for all for hours at a time; this was nothing. She drew her abdominal muscles tight, spread her palms flat for stability, and held position.

With her head hung low between her shoulders, long hair spilling around her face, the spectating orcs could imagine whatever expression most entertained them: anger, agony, despair. Before long, her wrists were aching. A burning set into her biceps and then her thighs, but the pain was welcome. Elyon focused on it, wrapped herself in it, let it muffle her surroundings.

At one point, Roga placed what felt like the wine jug between Elyon’s shoulder blades. If it was a test, it was an easy one. Elyon could stay like this, as still as any table, all night if need be. Her balance—when no one was yanking at her leash—was unmatched.

Initially, the orcs in the ring were uninspiring, their moves predictable and uncontrolled. But, as the weak were weeded out, the skill level gradually rose. After a few dozen rounds, a champion emerged, a massive bald-headed orc whose speed belied his size. Elyon still could have taken him on the field, but for a grunt, she had to respect his prowess.

There was a fresh roar of excitement as a new orc leapt from the platform into the circle. It was the hulking female officer, Shara-Lee’s owner, Captain Yargai. She and the bald brute were matched for size as they squared off, but their skill difference became apparent the moment they locked into a grapple. The foot soldier was reliant on his superior strength and skill against his peers, but his movements lacked the efficiency and finesse that came with high level training. He gave Yargai a good run, staying in the ring through several of her attempts to expel him, but ended up on his back outside the circle, nursing two black eyes. Yargai stayed in for several more rounds, demolishing all challengers, including the officer called Karrock.

Then, in a moment of excessive drama, Lieutenant Thragor shed his cape, cast down his drinking horn, and entered the ring. He was the biggest of Roga’s officers, with those frightening muscles that put even Yargai’s to shame. Just as Elyon was considering lifting her head and shaking her hair back to get a better view, Roga’s feet disappeared from her back and a firm pull on her leash brought her upright.

“Now, it’s worth watching.”

She was right. There was method as well as raw power to the way these two moved. The combat had reached a level that even Elyon had to appreciate and she found herself straining not to blink as she tracked the two striking, grappling orcs back and forth across the circle. It wasn’t long before Thragor threw Yargai from the ring so hard that she crashed straight through one of the logs the spectators had been using for seating.

The crowd went into fits and both officers grinned as Thragor clasped Yargai’s hand and pulled her to her feet. They exchanged a few playful punches to the shoulder that likely would have shattered the bones of a weaker creature and Yargai left the ring smiling. Elyon, however, found her eyes drawn to Shara-Lee, left kneeling on her own by Yargai’s empty chair. The lagosa had clasped her hands together, knuckles pressed to her mouth as her rabbit ears shook. She was now part of the pool, her fate dependent on the ensuing rounds.

“Well fought!” Roga said and the crowd fell silent to hear her. “Well fought! Are there any other challengers?”

No one stepped forward.

“Come, soldiers,” Roga pressed. “Lieutenant Thragor needs his practice too.”

No volunteers. Elyon couldn’t say she blamed them. She wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with that beast in bare-handed combat.

“Take a break then, Thragor,” Roga sighed. “Have a drink.”

“And then, General?” he asked, eyes aglow, eager.

“Then, you fight me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first off, check out this INCREDIBLE artwork by KaleeHearts on Deviant Art!!
> 
> There's a full-body version too ;)  
> https://www.deviantart.com/kaleehearts/art/The-Orc-and-her-Slave-Full-Body-855310122  
> ACTUAL FANART! I’m still shook.
> 
> Second, I introduced a LOT of new characters this chapter. Most of them aren't terribly important, but here's a rundown if you're like me and like to know exactly who everyone is in everything you read:
> 
>  **General Roga** (f) - you know who this is lol  
> Roga's slave: **Elyon Sylvendra** (f) - hopefully, you know her too  
>  **Lieutenant Magdur** (f) - Roga's second in command  
> Magdur's slave: **Azreth** (m) - fire demon (son of Demon Lord Yrudath)  
>  **Lieutenant Thragor** (m) - Roga's third in command  
> Thragor's slave: **Hemlock** (f) - dryad sorceress (formerly Queen Naiyera, ruler of the Wendwood)  
>  **Captain Karrok** (m) - Roga's fourth in command  
> Karrok's slave: **Clove** (f) - fawn  
>  **Captain Yargai** (f) - Roga's fifth in command  
> Yargai's slave: **Shara-Lee** (f) - lagosa (rabbitfolk)  
>  **Major Djurska** (m) - Roga's sixth in command  
> Djurska's slave: **Twig** (m) - half-orc, half-antlered fae  
>  **Major Grun** (m) - Roga's seventh in command  
> Grun's slave: **Layene** (f) - moon drow
> 
> Featured elf captives: **Gwynn** (f), **Syrene** (f), **Faerun** (m), **Myadel** (m), **Lylenna** (f)


	9. The Spoils

Elyon’s world stuttered to a stomach-turning stop as the orcs roared their approval. _No…_ this was not happening. Roga was _not_ about to gamble Elyon’s body on a fight with… _that_.

Roga might tower over Elyon, but she was nearly a full head shorter than her monstrous third-in-command. She might be strong, but Thragor’s arms were tree trunks. All that might not be quite so frightening had he not also been one of the best bare-handed fighters Elyon had ever seen. His holds were inescapable, his blows devastating, his feints airtight—not a single tell that Elyon could discern. To top it off, he was _faster_ than Roga. Faster than any creature his size had any business being…

“Worried?” a voice said and Elyon turned to find Roga look down on her, expression faintly amused in the torchlight.

Elyon’s tension must have been answer enough.

The orc leaned in and Elyon fully expected her to say ‘you insult me’ or something along those lines. Instead, she put her tusks to Elyon’s hair and whispered with incisive cruelty, “You’re a shit tactician.”

Before Elyon could respond, Roga pulled back and drew her dagger. Raising the knife in an overhand grip, she drove the blade through the end of Elyon’s chain and into the arm of her chair, anchoring the leash in place.

“Sit tight, pet. This won’t take long.” A hand atop Elyon’s head for a moment and Roga was off down the steps into the fighting circle.

The dagger was another casual show of dominance. Every orc in attendance knew Elyon’s reputation, even if they hadn’t seen her in action. They knew that it would take a fraction of a second for her to stand and yank the weapon free. Another half second and she could have it buried in Roga’s back… or her own gut, if she knew what was good for her.

But because she was defeated, she didn’t touch it. Just stayed on her knees, leashed, head down. She could feel Magdur’s green eyes narrowed on her in suspicion, so she made it a point to not even glance at the dagger.

At the edge of the fighting circle, Roga had shed her fur-lined cape, baring her broad shoulders and limber gray arms. She cut a striking shape in the firelight, raven hair wild about her, the night carving lines of shadow between well-defined muscles, but she was still so much smaller than Thragor… Elyon knew better than anyone that a size deficit could be overcome in armed combat, where a fighter’s reach extended to the end of her blade and her force focused to a steel edge. But bare-handed combat was a different game.

Having fought her twice now, Elyon had a decent read on her captor’s fighting style. It was efficient, yes, and respectably refined for an orc, but also reliant on brute force. The first time, Roga had put Elyon off balance by letting her axe go when Elyon had expected resistance; a clever trick but one that would only work once. That second time, in the tent, Roga hadn’t even outmaneuvered Elyon, really. She had just grabbed a heavier weapon.

 _You’re a shit tactician?_ Elyon huffed inwardly and gnawed the inside of her cheek to sate her frustration. _Really?_

If the stakes hadn’t been quite so high on her end, Elyon might have looked forward to watching Roga eat a three-course meal of solid knuckles. Instead, watching the orc who owned her step into the ring opposite Thragor just felt like watching her last line of troops march toward a massacre.

But Roga didn’t lay into a doomed charge when the moderating orc called “Fight!” She didn’t approach Thragor the way she had approached Elyon, in eager strides, ready to overwhelm and dominate. She took a last drink from her horn, cast it aside, cracked her neck, and motioned the larger orc to come at her.

He obliged, his speed as blinding as ever. But Elyon watched Roga’s eyes, watched those pupils dilate as she took in Thragor’s movements. As he fell on her, fist cocked, she shifted her weight minutely, prepared to spring in some direction—forward? Back? Right? Left? The question hung like dice in the air, with everything on the line.

Thragor’s wind-up was a feint; Elyon had watched enough of him fighting to know that. He drew the opponent’s attention to that dangerous fist, only to catch them with a hook from the opposite hand or a knee to the gut. Elyon would have dropped and plowed her shoulder into the inside of his standing knee, but Roga was too tall to make that work without risking a tusk-shattering knee to the face. Her only options were to retreat or play her odds with Thragor’s four devastating limbs—dodge one way and hope she’d made the right call. He was too fast for anything else.

A hard _thwack_ —

And Elyon blinked in surprise. Roga had caught Thragor with a decisive elbow to the jaw. Elyon’s eyes followed the strike as it happened, Roga’s body angled just slightly out of the way of Thragor’s left fist; what she didn’t understand was how Roga had known it was going to be a left hook. Lucky guess, maybe?

But playing the odds against such a powerful striker was flirting with death. Not a strategy characteristic of a general with an unbroken chain of victories.

Thragor reeled, having taken the force of not just Roga’s elbow but his own terrifying momentum. It would have been the perfect time to knock him out of the ring—he looked thoroughly dizzied—but instead of following up with another strike, Roga stepped back and let him regain his bearings. What the fuck was she doing?

 _Take him out!_ Elyon very nearly shouted before remembering where she was and _what_ she was in the context of this fight. Not a commander. Not a soldier. Not a participant at all. Just the prize.

The second time Thragor came at Roga, she slipped under his punch and caught him with a knee to the gut. The third time it was a thunderous uppercut that might have knocked the head off of a lesser creature. Roga could read him, Elyon realized, astonished and then shortly thereafter annoyed. Elyon was the Silver Arrow. What exactly was Roga seeing that she couldn’t? These were orcs, for fuck’s sake. Brutes. Their fighting wasn’t supposed to be too nuanced for her.

When Thragor attempted another feint, followed by a spinning elbow, Roga caught the arm mid-motion and knocked his legs out from under him. A similar move had put Elyon flat on her back beneath the orc during their first confrontation, but Thragor was three-hundred pounds more to handle. The two orcs went to the ground together, grappling, gray muscles straining beneath a sheen of sweat in the torchlight.

Elyon had gathered from watching Thragor engage Yargai that holds were not his strong suit. Why would he bother with that kind of striking force? As for what she knew of Roga’s holds... well, it was one thing to manipulate a bound and blindfolded prisoner half one’s size. Entirely another to make those holds work in combat in one’s own weight class. Roga apparently excelled at both. She had control as she and Thragor went to the ground. The window for him to take that control from her was small and, dizzied from the rain of blows to his head, he missed it.

By the time they rolled to a stop in the dirt, Roga was locked around him, legs wrapped around his torso, her right arm throttling his windpipe. She wasn’t settling for knocking her larger opponent out of the ring; as ludicrous as it seemed, she was aiming to physically dominate him.

But the fight wasn’t quite over. In an unbelievable show of strength, Thragor braced an arm against the dirt and struggled to his knees, lifting Roga’s full weight with him. Using the little mobility he had, he dropped, slamming his body down on hers hard enough to make even the most hardened warrior let go, but—and this was where Roga’s own brute strength came into play—she didn’t. Just grimaced, set her tusks, and tightened the hold around her underling.

Thragor rolled, pried at the arm around his neck, strained against Roga with all that terrifying muscle—but raw strength could be overcome with the right leverage and Roga’s was flawless. She rode out the resistance with the indifferent calm of a constrictor, thighs clamped hard around her prey.

Orcs apparently didn’t tap out; even the most hopelessly outmatched fighters, Elyon had noticed, took their beatings without any attempt to surrender. Thragor had no option but to endure until it was over. 

With that forearm across her throat, Elyon would have fallen unconscious in seconds, no matter how she struggled. Thragor lasted much longer, but the outcome was just as inevitable. He went limp to a pandemonium of cheers from the assembled orcs.

Roga released the larger orc, rolled off him, and gave his cheek a short pat to bring him to before climbing to her feet.

With the general in the ring, it was Lieutenant Magdur who stood to address the crowd. “Your champion for the night!” Azreth filled her drinking horn and she lifted it high. “General Roga!”

“General Roga!” the troops bellowed back and drank to their commander. “General Roga!”

When the chant had died down, Magdur said, “Presenting the spoils!” prompting a new wave of cheers.

Elyon half rose, unsure if she was supposed to do anything.

“Not you, elf. Stay,” Magdur said as though speaking to a dog.

Amid the cheers of the orcs, three slaves descended the platform steps and knelt before Roga… the slaves of the losers. Shara-Lee was holding a pretty posture on her knees but shaking visibly. The fawn called Clove was curled in on herself, her horned head of curls nearly touching the dirt at Roga’s feet. The dryad, Hemlock— _Queen Naiyera_ —had her jaw set in a valiant attempt to appear unafraid. All three looked like they might cry as Roga scanned them and considered her options.

The choice seemed tragically obvious to Elyon. Shara-Lee was easily the most beautiful of the three, the most poised, the fittest. A worthy prize for any warrior. Although something in Elyon’s heart twisted at the thought of watching Roga hurt the little rabbit. She was so shy, so soft… Roga’s hand brushed over those trembling rabbit ears for a moment—before moving on and settling atop the vine-haired head of Hemlock.

“You,” she said.

All three slaves blinked in shock. Elyon didn’t blame them. The dryad had none of Shara-Lee’s delicious curves or the fawn’s pretty submission. She was, in her own master’s words, _a handful..._ and he actually seemed to like her.

“What is your master calling you again, girl?” Roga asked. It was an intentional insult; the ageless dryad was well over a hundred years old.

“Hemlock, General,” said Thragor, who had revived and recovered with his trademark speed.

“Hemlock,” Roga crooned in languid tones that Elyon _felt_ , like a calloused hand down her spine. “I hear you could use a little breaking. Lucky for my second lieutenant, breaking things is my specialty.” Looking up, Roga locked eyes with Thragor. “She’ll be in my tent in an hour.”

A swell of whistles and cheers rose.

Both Clove’s and Shara-Lee’s shoulders visibly relaxed—though Shara did spare a sympathetic glance for Hemlock, who was looking, for all her pride, like she might be sick.

Roga returned to the platform and observed the rest of the festivities with her fingers playing casually in the hair at the nape of Elyon’s neck. After several more rounds of drink and rough-hewn song, the festivities started to break up, orcs staggering to their tents—many in twos and threes, some dragging unfortunate half-goblin slaves with them—to finish up the night. Roga’s hand tightened in Elyon’s hair.

“Come,” she said and hauled Elyon to her feet.

 _It’s over,_ Elyon realized with a strange mixture of relief and self-loathing. _I succeeded._ She had survived an entire celebration as Roga’s dog. _Now, all that’s left is the rest of the night,_ Elyon thought ruefully as she followed her master down the platform steps toward the general’s tent. She tried not to think of what would be waiting there, what Roga might order her to do…

“Now, was that so bad, pet?” Roga asked, winding the leash twice more around her hand so that Elyon was forced to walk a pace closer to her elbow.

‘No, ma’am,’ was probably the right answer but Elyon pressed her lips together before choosing different words. “I know it could have been worse.”

Roga slowed, flicking an intrigued expression at the elf in the torchlight. “Is that a ‘thank you,’ Sylvendra?”

Elyon glared at the ground ahead. “If it pleases you. Master.”

Roga snorted but didn’t seem to take offense.

“Permission to ask—”

“Your elves are uninjured. Mostly, anyway. They’ll live.”

Elyon nodded. She had seen as much from her few glances out at the crowd, but she had been trying to keep her mind off her elves. Maybe that was why Roga had brought it up. To unbalance her, to remind her subtly what was at stake before she faced the rest of the night? What sort of creature was this orc exactly? How did she always know exactly where to strike? Because there was reacting and there was knowing. Against an opponent as quick as Thragor—or Elyon, for that matter—there was no reacting. Roga _knew_.

“That wasn’t the question you wanted to ask,” Roga observed with another look at Elyon’s face.

“What’s his tell?” Elyon blurted before she could stop herself.

“Pardon?”

“Lieutenant Thragor’s. How did you know which side the attack would come from? I couldn’t find a tell.”

An oddly warm smile graced Roga’s face. She looked… _charmed_ was the only word for it. _“That’s_ your primary concern, at the moment? My second lieutenant’s _tell?”_

Elyon had no idea what to do with the fondness in the orc’s voice, so she said stiffly, “Apologies. That question probably wasn’t appropriate…”— _for a slave_ —“for me to ask.”

“It probably wasn’t,” Roga agreed, but walked on without any further admonishment.

“I’m sor—”

“Thragor doesn’t have a tell,” Roga cut her off. “He’s the rare inscrutable fighter, utterly infuriating… like a certain elf I know. I just make him nervous.” That explained little to Elyon, but Roga continued, “When he’s nervous, he favors his arms—fair enough; they are his best striking implements—and since he uses an arm to set up that feint—”

“Process of elimination,” Elyon said in understanding.

“Exactly.” Roga raised an eyebrow at her. “Better without that weighing on you, General?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The lesson she supposed was not to let Roga make her nervous. That became difficult as they neared the tent and impossible when they entered.

Magdur was on the bed, tying Hemlock’s ankles together as Azreth held the squirming dryad down. Elyon paused midstride, terrified to go any closer to the bed but fully expecting a tug on the leash to force her forward. However, Roga dropped the leash as she strode on, leaving Elyon standing where she had stopped.

Without a word, the orc general tipped Magdur’s head back and kissed her. Deeply, intimately. Elyon had never seen two orcs kiss before. Wasn’t sure she liked it.

Looking away, she sank to her knees on the furs. She didn’t know what else to do. _Kneel until needed_ was usually the rule for slaves, wasn’t it? So, she fixed her eyes on the furs before her and prayed—Gods, please—that she was not ‘needed.’

As long as Elyon kept herself here, away from the bed, she could make believe that there was a difference between her and the bound slave between the two orcs. The dryad tried to writhe free as her captors kissed above her and Elyon resisted sympathetic wince as Magdur dropped a knee on her midriff, cracking wood.

“I wouldn’t, bitch,” Magdur said when Roga released her from the kiss. “Those ropes are metal fiber, heat conductors. One order to Azreth and you’ll be burning so badly you can’t think.” Hemlock couldn’t respond after that knee to the gut—her mouth gaped soundlessly as she heaved for breath—but pure fear in those black eyes said that the threat of burning had hit its mark.

“Nice touch, Mag.” Roga’s fingers brushed through her lieutenant’s chestnut hair before producing something from beside the bed. It was the dryad’s staff— _Queen Naiyera’s_ staff, Elyon now realized, remembering the magical green shockwave it had released when she had broken it earlier that day. “I thought we might also have a little fun with this.” She smiled down at the bound dryad. “It’s in two pieces now, so we have plenty of options.”

Hemlock’s black eyes widened at the sight of the broken weapon and she shied back from Roga. Of course, the only place to go was straight into Magdur, who gripped her by the throat and held her still as Roga pressed in closer.

“I found earlier today that there’s still a bit of magic left in this thing.” She put the end of the staff to Hemlock’s chest and traced a slow line down her sternum, her twitching upper abdominals, her navel… “Seems to react to impact.” Roga rested the end of the staff at the soft upper corner of Hemlock’s slit. “I wonder what would happen if we put this inside you and hit the protruding end with a hammer…”

The threat made the dryad buck against Magdur, who tightened her grip, and what might have been a “no!” cut off in a gurgle.

“Easy, girl,” Roga ran a hand up the dryad’s ribs and squeezed one of her breasts as she struggled for air. “Be good for us and we may not have to find out. Just to be sure though…” She handed the smaller piece of the staff to Magdur, “find a nice little place to put that, Lieutenant.”

Hemlock choked and tried to writhe free of Magdur’s grip, but the orc threw her face-down on the bed and Azreth was there again, like an extension of his master, holding the prisoner down. Elyon looked away as Madgur moved between the dryad’s squirming legs and Roga ran a hand through leafy green hair.

“I hear that you keep giving Thragor trouble after he’s been so, so patient with you.” The shade of a threat in Roga’s voice somehow made Elyon want to shrink. “We’re going to see what we can do about that attitude.” And Elyon had to wonder exactly what constituted ‘patient’ with a slave, as far as the orcs were concerned. Was it just that Thragor hadn’t broken Hemlock’s neck? That he had only held hot iron to her body instead of… whatever the hell Roga had done to break Azreth?

“Elyon.” Roga’s voice was horribly gentle. “Would you like to join us?”

The words were a strange shock when Elyon had been waiting with dread for that firm order of “come” that brooked no argument.

“Like to… Master?”

“Yes.” Roga’s expression was inscrutable as golden eyes locked with Elyon’s over the trembling dryad. “Would you like to?”

Elyon was supposed to say ‘yes,’ wasn’t she? Supposed to jump at any opportunity to please. She couldn’t do it. She was frozen there on her knees.

Roga murmured something to Azreth that Elyon didn’t catch in her stupor and the demon slunk across the furs toward her, like flame across parchment. The air heated as he came in close, lips parted to reveal predatory teeth, then a slowly uncurling tongue, forked and as long as Elyon’s forearm. Everything in her wanted to shove him back, but resistance was not an option. So, she fisted her hands in her skirts and held still as the fire demon—this nightmare in rock and flesh—flicked that tongue against her cheek.

It burned. Azreth was bigger than Elyon—wasn’t everyone in this Gods-damned camp?—and for all its gentleness, the hand that gripped the back of her neck was terrifyingly strong. Strong enough that Elyon doubted pushing against his coarsely scarred chest would do a thing to keep him back. His lips met hers, blistering hot. Painful.

She made herself ice and didn’t react.

Roga was studying the proceedings with interest, toying idly with Hemlock’s hair as Magdur did something that made the dryad yelp and hyperventilate. Was this a test? And if so, a test of what, exactly? Roga had given Elyon no orders. So, was the point just… to not resist? Elyon could do that… she hoped.

When she didn’t respond to the kiss, Azreth slipped a hand under the hem of her skirt and slid it up her thigh. The sensation was bizarre, like sun-warmed rock against her skin. He pressed forward and she was on her back beneath him, a tongue like searing metal pressed against her closed lips. Was she allowed to do this? She wondered, sick to her stomach, keep her lips closed? Or was that like ‘covering herself’ in front of Roga? An impertinence… because her body didn’t really belong to her?

She didn’t realize she had started shaking until Azreth said, “Relax, Sylvendra,” in low-burning tones only she could hear. Another kiss. _You’ll be fine,_ he did not say. “You’ll survive.” _You won’t be hurt,_ he did not say. “It’ll hurt less if you embrace it.”

Endure, Elyon could do. Embrace…? That flaming tongue flicked the shell of her ear and she flinched. The demon was kissing her again and she tried to open her mouth beneath his. Gods damn it, she really tried but—

“Enough, Az.” Roga’s voice cut in with absolute authority. “Let her up.”

Azreth obeyed immediately—mechanically—releasing Elyon like a dog told to drop a stick.

“You have work to do here.”

Heart hammering, Elyon rolled onto her knees—and fled.

It wasn’t the smart thing to do or even, frankly, the adult thing to do. But something about those demon’s teeth against her mouth triggered a prey-like instinct to bolt. Leaving the tent was out of the question; nothing out there but more predators and a world of trouble for Elyon and her people. So, like a child, she hid.

Curled up under the half-collapsed table in the war room, she wrapped her arms around herself, rage and fear driving her heart hard against her ribs like a battering ram. But Roga didn’t shout for her, didn’t come to drag her back to the horrible scene on the bed. Maybe this too was a test. Maybe she was supposed to relent and return on her own, but she was past caring. She could swallow her pride and obey, but if Roga expected her to submit to degradation eagerly, without prompting, then the orc was insane as well as cruel.

Elyon had barely heard Hemlock speak, but there in the dark, she became intimately, viscerally familiar with the dryad’s screams. It was later in the night when Azreth started crying out in pain—a hideous, primal sound like steel screaming against stone. They both begged before the night was over. Begged for forgiveness, begged to be of use, begged for it to stop, “stop, please, I’ll do anything!”

And for all Elyon’s cowardly attempts to bury her head in her arms, she heard each grunt and cry, felt each breath on her skin. The screams entwined with her exhaustion like tentacles beneath the water and dragged her, writhing, into a sea of nightmares.

↞✶↠

As usual, the torture melted into rough, dominating sex. Queen Naiyera— _Hemlock_ —resisted admirably, but within an hour, she was begging to cooperate.

Roga and Azreth had held the dryad down while Magdur pierced her hard nipples through with a heated needle and inserted a pair of rings. The painful modification would only be permanent if Thragor liked it; if he didn’t, he could easily remove the rings and allow his slave to close the holes with her natural healing magic. For tonight, the orcs teased the rings, flicked them, tugged at them until the former queen of the Wendwood cried like a bitch.

Normally Roga enjoyed breaking a willful creature. It was why she had chosen Hemlock over sweet Clove and soft, stunning Shara-Lee. Tonight, for once, it felt like a chore.

She found herself strangely bored at the thought that, now that they had Hemlock in tears, their work was only half done. They had to drive the torment home. Make sure the memory of this night stuck hard in her head and quelled her whenever she so much thought of disobedience.

“Azreth,” Roga said as she threw Hemlock down on her back, only passively appreciating how the jiggle of her tits jolted the rings and made her yelp. “Fuck her.”

“Wait—” Hemlock gasped as Azreth obediently got into position. “Nn—”

Roga clamped a hand over the dryad’s mouth and dug her fingers into cheeks already moist with saltless tears. “I know you weren’t about to say ‘no’ to your superior, girl.” A wet sob strained against Roga’s palm and she slid her hand down to grip the skinny creature by the throat. “Do you ever deny an orc, pet?”

Hemlock’s whiteless black eyes brimmed with tears as she shook her head.

“Are you ever going to resist Thragor when he wants you?”

“N-no…” she sobbed.

“What do you say to Master Thragor when he orders you to bed?”

“Please…” Hemlock’s voice was tiny and choked with pain. “Please…”

“Good enough,” Roga sighed.

Azreth had lined himself up between Hemlock’s legs. He was a well-endowed creature—though Roga had never had much interest in that herself. She had chosen him for the times her moody lieutenant needed to be pinned down and fucked as well as the times she needed a submissive thing to wail on; Mag was complicated like that.

As demon drove into dryad, Magdur fisted her right hand in Azreth’s hair, twisting if he went too soft, while her left played with the Hemlock’s piercings.

“Please!” the former queen was keening before long, fucked to tears and arched in agony. “P-please! Enough! M-Ma’am… I beg you!”

 _“Enough?”_ Magdur’s lip curled back, menacing. “You haven’t even done your duty yet.”

Right. This was always part of their routine. Usually, Roga engaged it with passion. Operating on habit, she knelt on the bed over the dryad, straddling that anguished, tear-stained face. Mag helpfully took the slave by her vine-like hair and forced her face up between Roga’s legs.

“Suck, you bitch.”

A horrified sound of denial started in Hemlock’s throat but cut off, smothered in Roga’s cunt. The jolt of stimulation was pleasurable. The feel of a struggling creature between her legs, tearstained cheeks between her thighs… it was all stimulating, but all in a sort of detached way. As if happening to someone else. A puppet body, playing out this familiar scenario that somehow no longer interested her.

“Pleasure your conqueror,” Magdur hissed into Hemlock’s ear, “and maybe I won’t have Azreth come magma into your ugly little cunt.” Roga rolled her hips on the dryad’s mouth devouring her little squeak of terror and Magdur slapped one of the slave’s tender breasts. “I told you to suck, you useless whore.”

And the former queen of the Wendwood obeyed. The effort was there, bless her heart, but it wasn’t exciting Roga the way it should. Roga ground on the captive, suffocated her, clamped those wet cheeks hard between her thighs, looking for the right flavor of stimulation but nothing quite did it.

Proud Hemlock might be, and powerful, and pretty enough for a tree. But her rule had relied on inherited magics more than any strength, skill, or cunning of her own… Ultimately, once she was stripped of her vine robes and locked into a collar, there was little in this creature worth breaking. Just an excess of unearned pride. And even that deteriorated quickly in the face of pain. At her core, Naiyera was soft wood, not steel. She was no Elyon Sylvendra…

And that was the root of Roga’s disinterest, wasn’t it?

This wasn’t the conquest she really wanted.

Orn help her… A frantic mouth on her clit and all she could think of was bright steel eyes and Elyon’s voice saying hungrily “What’s his tell?” _There_ was a warrior. There was something worth conquering. If only she had stayed… but Roga was going to dominate Elyon, which was subtly different from forcing her, and would take more time.

For a moment, Roga was tempted to grab Hemlock hard, close her eyes to the image of Elyon, and ride the writhing dryad to climax. She had gotten by before, with slaves that didn’t excite her. But this time, she stepped back and pulled her nightshirt down over her thighs.

“That’s enough, girl.” She didn’t strike the dryad because, by Orn, she really had tried with that weird, textured little tongue of hers.

“General?” Magdur said in surprise.

“See that she pleasures you,” Roga said, brushing a knuckle along Mag’s bruised face, “and after that, we’ll have her show us how she means to pleasure her master.”

As Magdur positioned herself over the gasping, whimpering dryad, Roga went to the flap that divided her personal quarters from her war room and pulled it partway open.

Elyon Sylvendra was curled up under the war room table in her thin dress, her back to the personal chamber, leash slack and silver on the ground beside her, arms wrapped around her pale golden head as if to muffle the sound. The elf was asleep—or pretending to be. Normally, Roga would have been able to tell the difference, but the little general slept tenser than anyone Roga had ever known. Tenser than Magdur and that was really saying something.

So, Elyon hadn’t been stupid enough to leave her master’s tent. Roga had suspected as much, given that no orc had shown up at the tent to return her or sounded the alarm for an escaping slave, but the confirmation still made her smile. Curious that these tiny acts of submission from the elf somehow meant more to Roga than all Hemlock’s pretty begging and tears.

On the bed, Magdur was riding Hemlock’s face, half-lost already, her lean muscled body rolling with the sensation. One of her hands tangled in Azreth’s hair behind the horns and yanked, bringing his head down as he continued to pound into the dryad. Stifling a sound of pain, the demon heeded the unvoiced order, and his long tongue flicked out to stimulate his owner’s clitoris, helping her along.

When the two slaves—lucky for them—managed to bring the Magdur to orgasm, Roga ordered Azreth to pull out. The demon could work for hours without release—and would so without a peep of complaint; this meant that he could just about keep pace with a female orc. When it came to smaller creatures, it meant he could fuck them relentlessly right into oblivion. Hemlock shuddered as his cock pulled free, looking so glazed with exhaustion that the steel fiber ropes seemed a cruel excess.

But her night was far from over.

“On your knees, dryad,” Roga ordered, lounging back against the deerskin pillows at the head of the bed. “Show us how you handle a cock with your mouth.”

It was the last thing Roga wanted to watch at the moment, but Thragor had fought well—both tonight and on the field—and she wanted him rewarded. Besides, from the bed, Roga could just see Elyon’s form curled up in the dark of the war room beyond.

As Hemlock, by now too overcome to even think of disobedience fumbled to get herself into position before Azreth, Magdur went to her general, ready to pleasure her with tongue, or fingers, or anything she wanted. But Roga found that she wanted none of it tonight, even from Magdur. Instead, she grabbed the smaller orc by the arm, flipped her around and locked an arm across her throat. Not quite choking. Just controlling.

Magdur’s breath hitched, snagging on that tremulous fork between fear and anticipation. “General?”

“Just enjoy the show lieutenant.” Roga’s voice dropped low. “And give me that cunt.”

She gripped Magdur’s crotch hard and the smaller orc arched against her with a guttural gasp. Magdur might not have been able to go a round with Yargai or Thragor in the ring. Hell, she might not even be that impressive in the field, but Roga valued her first lieutenant over any of her other officers simply because Magdur worked twice as much—and worried twice as much—as any of them. She was the tenacious, annoying glue that held all of Roga’s operations together. Invaluable.

But it taxed any creature to keep herself wound so tight. Occasionally, Mag needed someone to take control from her, grab hold of her tightest strings, and _undo_ her. As Roga’s fingers slipped into her lieutenant, Magdur reached back, clawed hands tangling in her general’s hair. In response, Roga bit her, low on the neck, and growled all the usual words:

“You’re mine.” “Cry for me.” “Come for me.”

But the whole time, her eyes didn’t leave the little shape beneath her war room table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so I didn’t actually mean to write the Roga/Magdur/Azreth/Hemlock sex scene… initially, we were going to cut past it. However, it ended up feeling like a weird omission, so here we are with the four-way from hell. Don’t worry, next chapter we’ll be refocusing on our two leading ladies. And BONUS: I have it mostly written, so it’ll be up in the next few days.
> 
> If you missed last chapter’s endnotes and comments, check out this great fanart by [Apoptos](https://ibb.co/ZhKZfR6) and [Kalee](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/158d39bb-0c44-4bd6-a26e-dc2792776206/de4v38c-5e94e153-c130-4608-aa5c-8d262485f0a8.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1235,q_75,strp/the_orc_and_her_new_slave_by_kaleehearts_de4v38c-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3siaGVpZ2h0IjoiPD0xMjM1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMTU4ZDM5YmItMGM0NC00YmQ2LWEyNmUtZGMyNzkyNzc2MjA2XC9kZTR2MzhjLTVlOTRlMTUzLWMxMzAtNDYwOC1hYTVjLThkMjYyNDg1ZjBhOC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.HGw0AK8DTgGT83u3Kfc_iFs4c1COsXNYgtot3XXprSY) [Hearts](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/158d39bb-0c44-4bd6-a26e-dc2792776206/de589ii-996815ea-d849-4881-b7d2-9a72ab292160.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1721,q_75,strp/the_orc_and_her_slave__full_body__by_kaleehearts_de589ii-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3siaGVpZ2h0IjoiPD0xNzIxIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMTU4ZDM5YmItMGM0NC00YmQ2LWEyNmUtZGMyNzkyNzc2MjA2XC9kZTU4OWlpLTk5NjgxNWVhLWQ4NDktNDg4MS1iN2QyLTlhNzJhYjI5MjE2MC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.4SEbP-jqbtZlaaUuGwbfWQEdOzkhu0p0nV9GC7mPlgA)!
> 
> (And hey, if you're a US citizen over 18, do me a solid and make sure you [VOTE](https://www.usa.gov/how-to-vote). Please. It would make my day.)


	10. Blinking First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TW for this chapter:** mention of suicide. We don’t see it happen, but it is briefly discussed, so please proceed with caution, if that’s a trigger for you.
> 
> As usual, this chapter is barely edited. Please excuse the typos, inconsistencies, etc.

Elyon woke to a claw on her shoulder, another clamped over her mouth to stifle a reflexive shout of alarm. Glowing eyes burned red eyes above her.

“Sylv—ow!” Azreth hissed as Elyon’s fist connected with his face. “Quiet, Sylvendra. The masters are sleeping.”

Elyon sobered as the pain set into her knuckles. She nodded her understanding and the fire demon removed his hand.

“Good arm,” he whispered as Elyon rolled over and examined her bleeding knuckles. “You didn’t break your hand?”

“No,” Elyon said, flexing her fingers, but it had been a close thing. “Who do you think I am?”

“An elf,” he suggested wryly. “You’ll want to get that violent reflex under control. You don’t want to know what happens when you do that to a master.”

“Spoken from experience?”

Azreth’s silence—and his scars—were answer enough.

The flap to Roga’s personal quarters was pulled back slightly and Elyon could just see Roga and Magdur lying on the bed tangled in one another, Magdur snoring softly against her superior’s chest. It was an oddly intimate picture. Elyon might have called it tender but for the dryad, bound, burned, and barely breathing at the foot of the bed.

“We should attend them,” Azreth whispered.

“What?”

“Come with me.”

Happy to have an excuse to get out of that Godsforsaken tent, Elyon rose and followed Azreth out into the dawn-hued mist of a camp just beginning to stir. The atmosphere would have been relaxing had the circumstances been different—and had Elyon’s sleep not been riddled with nightmares that may have just been real sounds from the other end of the tent.

Azreth led on, picking his way across the remnants of the victory celebration toward the center of camp. Elyon started to follow but paused as her keen ears picked up a cough and the cold slither of chains. The cages had been invisible the previous night, swallowed by the dark beyond the torchlit circle. But Elyon could see them now through the clearing mist… there were the forms of elves— _her_ elves—packed in, should-to-shoulder, most likely chained at the hands and ankles. Before she consciously bid her feet to change direction, she was walking toward them.

“Sylvendra?” Azreth said, then realized where she was headed. “No!” He grabbed her arm. Not hard, but his hand was unyielding igneous rock.

“Let me go,” she demanded, on the off chance it would work.

He twitched ever so slightly at the commanding tone but kept his grip on her arm. “Has the general given you permission to approach them?”

Elyon just clenched her jaw.

“Then I wouldn’t.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m the general’s slave… I think I outrank you, demon.”

Azreth’s expression hardened and, for just a moment, he looked a proper demon, expression fierce, eyes ablaze. “I can restrain you.” His voice betrayed him, coming out more defensive than confident, weakened by a magma undercurrent of panic. Magdur had told him to keep an eye on Elyon. He wasn’t just offering friendly advice; he was terrified that the untamed elf would step out of line under his watch.

“Maybe,” she said, “you _are_ tall. But don’t forget who I am.” Azreth tried to clamp his intimidating expression into place but Elyon didn’t miss the subtle flex of his throat against that steel collar as he swallowed. She had found her leverage point and she exploited it ruthlessly. “I imagine I could make quite a bit of trouble for you.”

It was sad, really, how fast he crumbled. “Sylvendra, please…” His body might have been hard but his will was frayed and broken. “I beg you…”

And she drove for what she wanted. “I won’t make any trouble if you just tell me honestly how they’re doing.”

“I-I don’t—”

“You and your master oversee everything in this camp, right?”

Azreth nodded, still wary. He hadn’t taken the hand from her arm.

“So, you must know something. Just tell me whether they’re alright.”

Azreth paused, “Define alright.”

“You’re right. I _should_ just go see for myself,” Elyon said and hit him.

This time, she didn’t go for the closed fist, which clearly hurt her worse than it did him. She slammed the heel of her right palm into an old scar beneath his left ribs, reddened with fresh marks from Magdur’s claws. The blow had the desired effect, making him buckle in pain. It didn’t put him out of commission but the shock loosened his grip enough for Elyon to make herself quicksilver and slip free.

“Bye.”

“No!” Azreth didn’t move fast enough to stop her had she really wanted to break for her destination, but she allowed him to catch her by the shoulders and wheel her smaller body so that he stood between her and the cages. “Sylvendra, don’t do this!”

“Do what?” She blinked innocently up at him as stress heated the claws on her shoulders. “Aren’t _you_ supposed to be showing me where to go? I mean, how do you lose track of _one_ elf?”

“Fine, fine,” Azreth said. “Your soldiers are fine… as in… they’re alive.”

“Are they being fed?” Elyon wanted to know first.

“Yes… as much as any prisoner gets fed. Same rations as the half-breed slaves.”

Elyon digested this information impassively. Of course, the half-goblins’ horrible hollowed cheeks jumped to mind in attempt to panic her, but Elyon’s soldiers were strong and well-trained. They could scrape by on whatever they were given. The next question was harder.

“Are they being hurt?”

“Not badly,” Azreth said hesitantly, as though the wrong words might trigger another blow. “The guards beat them if they’re caught speaking. You know… so they don’t get to plotting with each other.” It made sense. It was no more than Elyon would have done, given the task of managing so many prisoners within the limited capacity of a war camp. “But the general has ordered they be kept alive, so no one would seriously injure them.”

“And… beyond the beatings?”

Azreth didn’t look at her. He knew what she meant.

“Answer me,” she commanded and this time the threat of violence in her voice elicited a bodily flinch.

“I… a-aside from the pretty ones they brought out for the festivities last night, there hasn’t been much. Just as punishment for aggressive behavior. Comparatively, they’re being treated gently. Now, we should get moving or the masters will be unhappy.”

“Yes,” she agreed and shook his hands from her shoulders—if only because serving was easier than standing here with the image of her soldiers being raped _as punishment for aggressive behavior_. “Of course. Wouldn’t want to keep the masters waiting. Let’s go.”

Azreth eyed her uneasily, clearly worried she would try to give him the slip again. She watched his fiery eyes move to the chain still connected to her collar. One of his hands moved toward it—

“Do you want to die today?” she asked mildly, and he lowered his hand. “Just lead on, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Azreth said—perhaps automatically—and did as she said.

As they argued, some of the mist had cleared and a clunk of pewter pots and ladles drew Elyon’s attention ahead to a cluster of half-goblin slaves hard at work stirring what smelled like the morning meal.

“Cook usually sets up near the middle of camp to discourage scavengers from trying to make off with the meats,” Azreth explained.

‘Cook,’ Elyon figured, was the gelatinous, pockmarked orc crossly snapping orders at the slaves as he gestured with a bloody meat cleaver. Elyon recognized him from the victory post and drew a little bit behind Azreth, carefully studying her feet, as they neared the cookpots.

“Some food, sir, for the general and Lieutenant Magdur?” the demon said.

“Aye, Az, have that right up for you,” the orc said, marginally less cross with Azreth than the half-goblins around him. The special today appeared to be slabs of elk, with a side of rice porridge. “Sit.” He gestured to a log, where the slaves called Twig and Layene sat, evidently also waiting on meals for their officers.

“Thank you, sir.” Azreth bowed his head.

“Surprised to see _you_ still alive and walking, little Arrow,” Cook said, lurid yellow eyes raking Elyon’s body.

“She’s hardier than you’d think, sir,” Azreth supplied before Elyon could speak, plainly worried that she wouldn’t respond appropriately. Fair enough.

“You be sure to thank the general for her mercy.”

The only response Elyon could manage was a half nod, which may not have satisfied the cook, but what was he going to do? He couldn’t hit her. So, she walked coldly past him and sat on the end of the log as far as she could from the other slaves. Azreth made a passing attempt at conversation with Twig and Layene, but they were despondent, seemingly too ravaged from the previous night to make small talk. Evidently, drow and fae didn’t bounce back from a night of savagery as fast as a fire demon.

Despite having arrived well after Twig and Layene, Azreth and Elyon were handed the first two platters of food the half-goblins put together. On their way back to Roga’s tent, Elyon couldn’t help a glance toward the distant cages where her elves were being held. Azreth watched her with open anxiety, but she wrenched her eyes from the cages without breaking stride and forced herself on.

“Chin up, General,” Azreth said, gentler than Elyon would have been with someone who had just struck and threatened her. “You and your soldiers have been given a chance to keep living. It’s more than most captives get. We’re the lucky ones.”

“You know for a demon, you’re awfully chipper,” she snapped.

A dry smile. “It’s a gift.”

“It’s insufferable. Where’s your dignity as a monster?”

Azreth didn’t answer but the little of a smile he had managed went out like embers in the cold.

The two orcs were awake when Elyon and Azreth re-entered the tent, Roga sitting up against the pillows and Magdur, a stirring head of disheveled chestnut curls, just coming to under her arm.

“Azreth, the lieutenant will take that in her tent,” Roga said as Elyon set her tray on the small table across from the bed. “Oh, and when you can spare a moment, take that back to Lieutenant Thragor with my compliments.” She nodded to Hemlock.

“Yes, ma’am.” Azreth bowed low and quietly retreated from the tent.

“Elyon.”

“Ma’am?” Elyon blinked, surprised to be addressed—in what seemed like an unthreatening tone—after Roga’s strange instructions and subsequent lack of instruction the previous night.

“Be a doll and untie the dryad, would you.”

Magdur’s knotwork was elegant, secure, and hellishly difficult to undo, thanks to the metal fiber in the ropes. But damned if Elyon was going to fail at something as simple as untying some ropes. And she really would rather be finished and away from that bed as soon as possible, so she worked at the knots with methodical aggression, forcing her slender fingers into the gaps and painstakingly tugging each loose. The ropes revealed blackened skin as they came away from the dryad’s legs and she moaned.

 _Easy soldier,_ Elyon almost said, as if the strange creature were one of her own. _Almost done._ But that would have been speaking out of turn, wouldn’t it? In fact, when Hemlock groaned again, Magdur threw a boot—which was poorly aimed, thudding harmlessly into Hemlock’s thigh—and snapped, “Shut up!”

“Come now, Mag,” Roga said, in better spirits. “It’s not the slaves’ fault you overdrank your tiny capacity.”

Elyon hardly heard Roga, her attention drawn instead to the source of a faint jangle she had noticed went the boot struck bark-like skin. The dryad’s nipples had been pierced and rings put through them. Elyon focused on not disturbing the sensitive piercings as she tugged the ropes from Hemlock’s chest. But her elbows did come in just slightly as she worked, protective of her own breasts, which—judging by the burns and odd tree bruises—would not have survived the treatment the orcs had given Hemlock.

As uncomfortable as the task was, Elyon was glad to have something to draw her focus, as she had no desire to watch as Roga woke Magdur with kisses, bites, and a soft twisting of the lieutenant’s hair in her fist.

“General, why didn’t you—ah!”—Magdur gasped as Roga grasped her somewhere beneath the blankets—"w-wake me earlier?”

“Well, you were sleeping so soundly.”

“Azreth—”

“Wakes like clockwork, I know. I told him to let you sleep.”

“I should have been up before dawn,” Magdur complained as she extracted herself from Roga’s arms and scrambled clumsily into her armor. “There’s so much to do.”

“I’ll get you the appropriate help.”

“The appropriate help was factored into the original schedule,” Magdur hissed in distress. “I can’t—”

“Relax, Mag. Hey”—a rustle as Roga gripped Magdur hard but the shoulders or the back of the neck—“Relax.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Magdur said tightly. “Yes, ma’am. Apologies.”

Having freed the dryad from the last of the metal fiber ropes, Elyon slid a hand beneath the poor creature’s neck, wondering if she should try to help her upright.

“Don’t bother, Elly,” Roga said from the bed. “Just roll up that rope for Magdur. That skinny thing won’t be standing or walking for a few days.”

“You know Thragor will just let her heal,” Magdur said, groggy but not too much so to affect a tone of deep exasperation. “Fuckin’ tree-hugger.”

“After the night we gave her, I’m sure he’ll try,” Roga said and the casual amusement in her voice made Elyon’s stomach turn, “but I doubt she has it in her.”

Azreth returned to collect Hemlock just as Magdur finished getting into her armor and snatched her coil of precious demon-proof, dryad-proof rope from Elyon’s hands. Elyon crouched slightly over the half-conscious dryad, oddly reluctant to surrender her to her fate, but of course, she had as little say in the matter as Hemlock. And Azreth was gentle enough as he lifted the whimpering creature in his arms.

When the lieutenant and two slaves were gone, the only sound left was the shuffle and clink of Roga donning her armor for the day, and Elyon was reminded soberingly that she had her own fate to worry about. Retreating from the bed, she sank to her knees and waited tensely for Roga to finish dressing.

Elyon had closed the celebration the previous night in decent standing, she was fairly sure… Then there had been the business here in the tent, which had been terrifying, and repulsive, and confusing. It was the confusion that worried Elyon more than anything, made her rigid with nerves. Keeping her soldiers alive meant doing what Roga wanted, which should have been as simple as doing what she was told. But she had no idea how to make the orc happy with mind games in place of orders.

When Roga approached, Elyon found herself ducking her head a little lower, unable to read her mood and bracing for the worst—

“I see Azreth has shown you how to attend in the mornings.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elyon said without inflection, perhaps a little too military…

“He took some work but he’s a good boy. You can stand, by the way.” There was a strange terseness in Roga’s voice. An impatience.

Elyon got to her feet quickly, again braced for an attack.

“And look at me.”

When Elyon obeyed, she saw in Roga’s eyes that the orc wanted to hit her. To grab her by the throat, slam her back onto the table, and Gods only knew what then. But Roga didn’t follow through on that simmering promise of danger. “Let’s save the bowing and kneeling for when I’m admonishing you, yeah?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elyon said mechanically to hide her total confusion.

Was she not being admonished now? Why? Roga was clearly angry about something. Most likely about Elyon’s behavior after the victory celebration... about her refusing sex. Process of elimination. That had to be it... But if so, then why hadn’t Roga just ordered her to kiss Azreth back, to come to the bed? That was all it would have taken. Was it that Roga wanted Elyon to _want_ to degrade herself? Because that was insane, and Roga struck her as a generally intelligent creature. Elyon had agreed to obey, not to intuit. Hadn’t she?

She was still standing where she had been ordered, anxiously combing the previous night’s events, as Roga strode past her to the table—again, without laying a hand on her. If Elyon had actually done something wrong, why _didn’t_ Roga hit her? Elyon would have preferred that to this awkward, hellish uncertainty.

“There a reason you’ve been standing like a rabbit in magelights for a full minute, elf?” Roga asked from the table. “A witch hex you?”

“Ma’am… about last night…”

“About last night?” For the moment, the threat was not in Roga’s voice, but it was still there somehow, right beneath the surface.

Elyon swallowed. “Permission to ask a question?” she ventured and, when Roga nodded, immediately wished she had specified: _permission to ask a_ stupid _question_. Because when she voiced it, it did sound so hopelessly stupid. “Should I be apologizing… for last night? For not…?”

“What do you think?” in that same indecipherable tone.

 _What do you think?_ Fuck this orc. “Why are you—” Elyon stopped short of _why are you doing this to me?_ which would have sounded childish as well as confrontational. “I…” Her hands were fists at her sides. “I don’t understand this game, Master.”

“What game?”

Now, Elyon’s own anger was seething to the surface. Squaring with the orc, she opted for blunt honesty. “The one where you want me to join your orgy but don’t order me, then get annoyed when I refuse but don’t punish me.”

“Are you asking me to punish you?”

Fuck if Elyon was going to blunder into that trap of a question. “I’m _asking_ for some clarity, ma’am. Please.”

“Clarity?” Roga repeated. “My dear Sylvendra, I had no idea you were this dense.”

“Excuse me?” Elyon snapped before she could stop herself.

“Do you imagine that Magdur tells Azreth how to sit, how to braid his hair, how to wake up in the morning, how to mind his tone with his superiors?” A meaningful look at Elyon. “I mean, _I_ did, when I was first breaking him in because the boy is dumber than a box of rocks. But you’re smart. Thought I’d give you a little room to use your common sense.”

Common sense? That was what this was about? Common sense said come to bed when your master offers. Common sense said sacrifice the tiny shred of dignity you have left unasked, like a dog.

“So, you wanted me to say yes? To just submit without any prompting?”

“I _wanted_ to see what you would do.”

“And I disappointed.”

“Well, we both know you need work, so—What are you doing?” she asked as Elyon went to her knees beside the table.

“I think you’re admonishing me,” Elyon said, “or you should.”

Roga tilted her head, golden eyes squinted just slightly in interest. “I’m not sure whether to be more taken aback that you seem to be telling me what to do or that you seem to be telling me to punish you.”

“Shouldn’t you?” Elyon demanded, voice cracking slightly in frustration. “Wouldn’t that make things easier?”

“Would it?”

“I’d prefer to be punished than mocked,” Elyon said, “and I’d a thousand times prefer to be raped than willingly degrade myself. _Master.”_

“That’s all very informative.” Roga uncrossed her legs, turning slightly to face the kneeling elf. “But last I checked, I was your master and you were what, Elly?”

“A slave,” Elyon ground out.

“That’s right," Roga returned with the most condescending tone possible, "and does it matter in the slightest what a slave prefers?”

Elyon’s teeth clenched hard on the words ‘no, Master,’ and ‘sorry, Master,’ and she knew that if she attempted them, she was just going to scream. So, she kept her mouth shut and held still when Roga reached down for her, slid fingers into the hair at the back of her neck, then gripped painfully hard. Because, well, she had literally asked for it, hadn’t she?

But instead of hitting her, the orc pulled her up and forward, forcing her to raise herself up on her knees to take the pressure off her neck.

“Elyon...” Roga brought her face in close to the elf’s so that their foreheads were nearly touching, those cursed calm gold eyes holding Elyon like a hand around the throat. “I am not going to hurt you to extract sex from you. But to be clear: if you contradict me to my face one more time, I will strip you down and slap you so hard you don’t remember your own name. Understood?”

Elyon blinked first.

A week ago, any elf could have told you that Elyon Sylvendra never blinked first, never stepped back from a clash unless it was to set up her next incisive attack. Roga had changed all that. Here under that golden gaze, there was no next attack, no way to go but back and down, down beneath Roga’s heel. The orc held all the leverage and, with each move, Elyon lost ground, became weaker, became less.

Roga’s hand tightened just slightly, twisting the elf’s neck at a painful angle, and Elyon blinked twice more. “Understood, ma’am.”

“Good.” Roga dropped her back on her knees. “And while you’re sitting there at my boots like a dog, here.” She skewered a hunk of meat on the end of her dagger and offered it to Elyon. “You must be starving.”

“Thank you,” Elyon made herself say and pulled the venison from the blade with her teeth.

It was too big for her to chew and swallow all at once. She ended up working on it for quite a while, while Roga occasionally glanced at her in amused. After a time, the orc dropped the unfinished platter on the packed dirt before Elyon, who looked up at her in confusion.

“Stay and polish that off for me, elf. You’ll need your strength for the road and I have a camp to oversee.”

↞✶↠

It took the orcs only an hour to dismantle their war camp, discard all excesses, and load the necessities onto wagons, pack boars, and woolly rhinos. Elyon would have admired their efficiency had she not spent the hour with her stomach in knots of worry for her elves. After her earlier lapse—well, series of lapses—in decorum, she was terrified that Roga would decide to cut off a few more ears, maybe some fingers, maybe worse. She didn’t pick up any screams amid the bustle of orcs and slaves, but that was no guarantee that all was well. Like their general, many of Elyon’s soldiers had trained to hold their pain behind their teeth.

At this distance, she could see that the makeshift cages had been dismantled and her elves had been chained together in two single-file lines, one behind Major Djurska’s rhino and one behind Major Grun’s. She tried to count the small, shackled forms, to check that all thirty were still there, still standing, but it was too far and Roga had told her to stay.

“Ma’am,” Elyon ventured when Roga approached, leading a woolly rhino laden with heavy tack and saddlebags, “is there anything I can do?”

Roga looked her up and down in amusement that Elyon found utterly insulting. As if her size had ever prevented her from pulling the same weight as an orc. “You, little thing? You can give me your wrists.”

When Elyon just stood there, Roga snapped her fingers. “Here, girl.” She pulled a coil of rope from one of her saddlebags. “We’re already running behind the lieutenant’s schedule and we don’t want a cranky Mag on our hands, do we?”

Bowing her head, Elyon stepped forward and offered her hands. Roga was not as handy with knots as Magdur, but she still made short work of Elyon’s wrists, lashing them together with a series of simple but secure knots that didn’t restrict the circulation but would still be difficult to slip.

“I don’t…” Elyon started but trailed off when she remembered the last time she had raised this objection: _I gave you my word I would obey. You don’t need to lead me like an animal_. All she had gotten for her trouble as was a sound choking.

“Something to say, Sylvendra?”

“No, Master… Apologies for speaking out of turn.”

“I hear that you gave Azreth some trouble this morning, threatened him?”

The involuntary sound that left Elyon was somewhere between frustration, disgust, and a low, growling cringe. It made Roga laugh.

“Ah, don’t hate him for snitching, Elyon. He’s learned to tell Magdur everything. Far less pain that way.”

 _What if it’s_ Magdur _I hate for snitching?_ Elyon thought but didn’t say aloud.

“Since you seem to be struggling with common sense today, let’s clarify: acting as a good slave includes when I’m not watching. Now, I don't know how lax you were with your own troops, but don’t think _anything_ happens in this camp without me knowing about it.”

Elyon bit the inside of her cheek and nodded. “I understand, ma’am. I…” she started, then shook her head, figuring it wasn’t worth trying to explain herself.

“I know you were just trying to check on the status of your elves,” Roga said. “You don’t trust my word.” It was an observation more than an accusation. “Believe it or not, I have not lied to you—about your elves or what your behavior means for their well-being—so, I do not appreciate you probing behind my back. Understood?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Now…” Roga gave Elyon’s bound wrists a tug, bringing the elf a step closer. “In the spirit of honesty between us, you should know… one of your elves killed herself last night.”

Elyon’s head jerked up. Her blood went cold.

“One of the ones we had out for entertainment. Pretty brunette, a little smaller than you, cutest little freckles.”

_Gwynn._

“Managed to hang herself with her manacles sometime in the night and her fellow prisoners didn’t stop her. We just discovered her body this morning.”

Biting her lip, Elyon quickly put her head back down so that Roga wouldn’t see the anguish on her face. Her first impulse would have been to disbelieve the orc, to accuse her of lying to cover for the violence of her own soldiers. But Gwynn was simple, and loyal, and exactly the kind of elf who would have killed herself rather than go on living in shame. The other elves would have sympathized—as Elyon did—and respected her decision.

Without meaning to, Elyon lifted her bound hands to her face and clasped them together, betraying her distress. Knuckles ground into her forehead, she braced for derision, prayed for the strength to take it without retaliating—

But to her surprise, Roga just lay a hand atop her head and slowly petted her hair.

“Don’t take it too hard, Elly. There was nothing you could have done.”

Perhaps out of a subconscious desire to provoke Roga to violence, Elyon didn’t stop the words from turning into a ragged whisper. “I could have defeated you.”

“Ah, but could you?” Roga gave her cheek a short pat. “Don’t beat yourself up, sweet. That’s my job.”

“Yes, Master,” Elyon said in hopes that it would get Roga to remove that gentle hand. She couldn’t take gentleness now. Not when all she deserved was a swift punch to the teeth and worse. So much worse. Oh, Gwynn...

“Good girl.” Roga clasped Elyon's shoulder with entirely too much warmth before mercifully letting go and turning to mount her rhino. Once settled in the saddle, she tied the end of the rope around the horn before her and yanked it tight.

“You know, this sullen, barely-compliant act you have going is cute. It really is. But you might consider what it means for your soldiers.”

“Master?” Elyon felt stripped, cold in the autumn air and the bare fear was audible in her voice.

“Your elves were always going to be subjected to the victory celebration in some capacity. But I did promise that if you served surpassingly well, I could make them more comfortable. So, if you want to spare them similar treatment in the future, you might consider being a better slave, orders or none. Something to contemplate during the walk ahead.”

At the reference to walking, Elyon glanced down at her bare feet. Even the most sure-footed elves didn’t go without boots in these woods. The thorns were too many, the rocks too sharp. Roga didn’t miss the thought as it flickered across her face.

“Slaves walk, Elly. And only good slaves get shoes.”

If the orc was hoping Elyon would balk or complain, she would be disappointed. “Understood, ma’am.”

The smile that crossed Roga’s face was appreciative, but it was also a challenge: _we’ll see how long that attitude lasts._

As orcs, prisoners, mounts, and slaves fell into marching order, Magdur pulled alongside Roga on a rhino smaller and shaggier than the beast Elyon had eviscerated weeks earlier. Azreth walked at his master’s side, unrestrained and far better dressed for a walk in the woods than Elyon, in boots and a long leather jacket strapped tight about him with a series of buckles. He didn’t meet Elyon’s eyes as he passed. Spineless fuck.

“Everything is in order, ma’am,” Magdur said. “We’re ready to move out on your signal.”

“Good,” Roga said as Thragor rode up on her other side on an absolutely monstrous rhino.

“Now you’re _carrying_ her?” Magdur rolled her eyes in exasperation.

Hemlock was so much smaller than her caped and armored master that it took a moment before Elyon saw the dryad perched sideways on the front of Thragor’s saddle—straddling such a broad mount would have been agony after what she had suffered the previous night—bundled like a baby into what looked like one of the second lieutenant's spare cloaks.

“She’s hardly in any condition to walk,” Thragor objected, putting an arm protectively across his slave as she leaned into his chest with a hollow, listless look in her eyes.

“Have her heal.”

“She can’t use her magic when she’s this physically exhausted,” Thragor shot back with a note of accusation.

“So, force her.”

“Magdur, bring up the rear and see that the prisoners and supplies are in order,” Roga ordered before the two could rehash what to Elyon was already feeling like a very tired argument. “Thragor, ride ahead and set a path of traversable ground.”

“Yes, General,” both lieutenants said in unison and split off to do her bidding.

“Move out!”

As the rope pulled taut around her wrists, forcing her feet into motion, Elyon stared down the forest ahead and understood that she was indeed being punished. If only in a roundabout way. _Good slaves get shoes,_ Roga had said, but even the prisoners and half-goblin thralls had forest-ready boots on their feet. No one would ask a creature to trek these woods unshod unless they meant it as a cruelty.

But Elyon found that she didn’t mind cruelty, at the moment.

She deserved to suffer—for what had happened to Gwynn, if nothing else. If Elyon had just served better, faster, with less reticence, Roga might have been inclined to spare Gwynn and the other elves the gang rape the previous night, might have spared Elyon’s scouts hours of torture, might have hurt her soldiers a little less. A week ago, ‘ _might have’_ would have seemed like a poor trade for one’s dignity. But right now, it was all Elyon had.

So, she fixed her eyes ahead, on the rocks and thorns of the Deep Woods and resolved to make each one a stinging reminder of how she could do better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much fun as I’ve had with the larger cast of side characters, I will say that I’m glad to be back with just our leading ladies for a while... even if all they did was bitch at each other. Hope you all enjoyed the chapter!


	11. Naked Steel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter banged out pretty quick, so forgive the inevitable errors.

Elyon held up admirably, even when the rhinos moved fast over uneven ground. Roga would have liked to turn around in the saddle purely for educational purposes. Because damn it, how _did_ the elf managed to pick her way across the forest floor so safely and so fast with absolutely no margin for error. One misstep, one trip and she could easily find herself limping and unable to avoid obstacles for the rest of the day, but for hours on end, the rope stayed slack around Roga’s thigh as the little soldier kept up.

Roga made it a point not to acknowledge her prisoner, though each time Thragor doubled back to report on the terrain ahead, he said something to the effect of, “Oh, Orn’s Blood, she’s still going?”

“She’s learning,” Roga said and kicked Ylgor into a brisker pace.

She didn’t expect pain alone to break Elyon Sylvendra. The elf was actually singularly resistant to it. But pain had a way of focusing some creatures. And, for all Elyon’s pride and power, Roga had noticed that the elf was far more pragmatic with a boot to her neck or a hand fisted in her hair. Twenty miles of punishing thorns and rocks might be just what she needed to grasp her situation and accept— _really_ accept—what she needed to do.

It would take more than one day, by Roga’s estimation, but she still had half a jar of fae healing ointment left. She could afford to march Elyon through these woods on bloody soles and broken ankles, if that was what it took for the elf to learn her place.

When Roga called the troops to stop for rest and water, Elyon was astonishingly still standing. Her little feet were bruised, scratched, and almost certainly sore beyond belief, but she still stood tall as she walked to Roga and asked calmly, “Anything I can do, ma’am?”

“Sure,” Roga said—because the elf had asked and so had no one to blame but herself. “You can take this”—She produced her drinking horn and handed it to her slave—“and fetch me a drink from the barrel at the back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elyon said, seemingly unbothered, as Roga untied one of the knots at her wrists. The rope tethering her to the saddle horn came free, but her hands remained bound together, since she hardly needed full mobility to fetch some water. Let her walk the length of the caravan bound and suffer the derision that came with it.

Breaks for Roga’s troops were not long. When Elyon returned with Roga’s horn, the orc drained it, tied the elf to the rhino again, and ordered the troops forward. Elyon’s expression was blank in that half-defiant way that seemed to challenge Roga to break her composure.

“Tired yet, sweet?” Roga couldn’t help but ask.

“No, ma’am,” Elyon said, despite her obvious dehydration and the miserable raccoon circles under her eyes.

“Good.” Roga swung into the saddle. “Because we’ll be on the move until dusk.”

It was the dusk that eventually did Elyon in. Elves couldn’t see in the dark any better than orcs, making treading carefully ever more difficult as the sun sank from view. When sunset colored the trees, even the Silver Arrow, understandably, began to stumble. As the sky faded from red to purple, she tripped on a root she either hadn’t seen in the waning light or had simply been too exhausted to avoid, and fell.

Her little body did nothing to slow the woolly rhino, but Roga felt the rope draw tight against her thigh and then drag. Without glancing back, she reined Ylgor in just slightly, slowing the creature to a leisurely plod. She had no intention of dragging her captive by the wrists across the remaining half-mile to their destination. She was just curious to see if the elf had anything else left in her. Unlikely, Roga figured. Hard to rally while being dragged over bruising tree roots.

There was a pained grunt and the rough rustle of a body skidding through the underbrush… then labored breathing and the rustling sound of knees, then feet, crunching over leaves, and the rope loosened. Elyon was back on her feet, and—the rope went slack— _walking_.

“Don’t worry, Elly.” It was the first acknowledgment Roga had given the elf since they had resumed traveling, a small reward for her impressive stamina. “We’re close.”

"She's bleeding quite a lot, General," said Thragor, who had fallen back with the rest of the troops.

"I'm sure she is," Roga said without looking back.

When she kicked her rhino back to a normal gait, Elyon, miraculously, kept pace.

They made camp by the western fork of the only stream that ran through this part of the woods. Roga dismounted at the thickest oak she could find and lashed Ylgor to its trunk as foot soldiers and half-breed slaves set about pitching the tents.

When she turned to face Elyon, she saw that Thragor's concern had not been unfounded. The elf was a wreck, seemingly held together by pure tenacity—and even that was straining at the seams. Her feet were covered in blood, both her knees were skinned raw from the fall and caked with dirt. Her thin dress and bare shins had been shredded to ribbon by passing thorns.

“Well,” Roga rested hands on her shoulders and looked the little creature up and down. “You look like shit, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master,” Elyon agreed wearily. “Apologies?”

“You’re forgiven.” Roga clapped the elf on the shoulder to see if she would buckle. She didn’t, but it was a close thing. There was an uncharacteristic give in her knees and her mouth tightened in an almost-wince at the jolt on her injured feet. When Roga freed her wrists, those were unsurprisingly red with rope burn.

“Come.” Roga gripped the elf by her upper arm, partly to lead her but mostly to make sure she didn’t collapse, and took her down to the stream bank. “It’s time for a wash.”

At the suggestion, Elyon clamped up and, when Roga released her arm, she stopped in place, well back from the water. The elf stayed there, absently massaging one of her reddened wrists, as Roga stripped off her own boots and waded into the bracing current.

“It’s just water.” She said dipping her hands and using that to scrub some of the day’s grime from her face. “Sure, it’s cold, but it doesn’t bite. What’s the matter?”

“Just wondering if you’re going to try and drown me again,” Elyon frowned. “Up to you, of course, I’d just appreciate a heads-up.”

Unbelievable. All those rocks and roots still hadn’t beaten the attitude out of her. Not even for five minutes.

“I might, if you continue being a disobedient brat.”

“Understood, ma’am.” Elyon had wrapped her arms around herself in the biting air. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you’re sorry?” Roga raised her eyebrows at the elf before splashing a cupped handful of water over her face. When she opened her eyes, Elyon was looking confused and faintly distressed.

“You’re still unhappy with me,” the elf observed. She sounded frustrated and tremulous beneath that veneer of steel—almost like she could cry. That would have been irritating and Roga was glad she refrained.

“Here’s the thing, Elly,” Roga said, unfastening her armor and casting it onto the stream bank. “I don’t care much for apologies. I’ll extract them, when necessary, but contrition isn’t really what I’m looking for from you.” Each word was carefully placed to push on the elf’s weak points, give her something to chew on as she lay beside Roga that night, contemplating her people’s fate and what she could do to change it. “I prefer that my inferiors serve properly in the first place.”

Eventually, the elf would come to her willingly. For now, Roga let her sit with those words, and finished washing in silence.

↞✶↠

Drenched in water, Roga’s gray skin shone blue in the dusk, and it occurred to Elyon that she had had never actually seen her master naked before. Maybe standing high on the stream bank, fully clothed, watching the orc bathe should have given her a sense of power, but it didn’t.

That last of the day’s light made a dark glass statue of Roga’s physique, each muscle slick and shining. A good strategist would have searched for malformed scar tissue, underdeveloped muscles, some exploitable weakness, but Elyon, in her haze of exhaustion, couldn’t find any. As the orc splashed water back through her hair, droplets ran down over full, firm breasts, ample thighs partitioned into tight slabs of muscle, those arms that could hit like battering rams and strangle like pythons…

And all Elyon could think was that this creature was her superior. All she could see was how easy it would be for Roga to grab her, forcibly strip her clothes off, and hold her underwater. Tired or not, injured or not, there would be nothing Elyon could do.

Fortunately, Roga didn’t seem interested in drowning anyone today. She just finished washing, gathered her clothes, and headed back toward the tent.

“Salve and bandages in the bag, Elyon,” she said without looking back at her slave. “I do insist that you use them.”

That was reasonable, as much as Elyon might have wanted to prove she didn’t need anything for the pain. Open cuts weren’t safe anywhere, let alone on the road with strange creatures. Since Roga was gone, she allowed herself a sigh of relief as she sank down on a rock at the bank, finally taking the weight off her battered feet. Though she would never admit it, she might even have moaned when the rushing water consumed her legs, making cuts sting and bruises throb. She closed her eyes, stiff with pain for a few moments, before the cold made her legs numb and she could bear to move again.

Taking stock of the damage, she wasn’t angry at Roga so much as she was frustrated with herself. _Clumsy_ a chastising voice scoffed in her head. For most of the day, she had managed to place her feet carefully, avoiding sharp rocks and thorns. The majority of the damage was from the last few hours of the march, when the lights had faded and Elyon had simply become too exhausted to place each step with precision.

As she set about dabbing the dirt from the swollen cuts, a sound made her head jerk up. A scream. An elf’s scream. Unbidden, Elyon’s hands gripped the edge of the rock as if to push her to her feet, but the agonizing truth froze her where she was: there was nothing she could do.

She strained to make out the voice, to identify the speaker or the words, but it was too far. And Elyon had never heard any of her soldiers sound so afraid.

She had opened her mouth to call for Roga—if she lay down her dignity and begged, maybe the orc would stop whatever was happening on the other side of camp—but she closed her mouth when she realized what a stupid idea that was.

Roga had made it clear that she expected Elyon to serve well before she started doing her any favors beyond allowing her soldiers to live. And though the prideful child in Elyon kept trying to deny it, she knew what _serving well_ really meant. There was precisely one thing Elyon could do—that she _had_ to do—for her soldiers. She was the one who had led them out of the safety of the ravine. She was the reason they were all prisoners now. It was her responsibility to protect them, no matter the cost to herself or her pride.

She had gotten a cursory look at her soldiers when she passed to fill Roga's horn earlier. Enough to gather who had lived and who was gone. A shock of red hair had told her that her loyal lieutenant, Terryn Keldir, was still alive and in possession of both ears, despite the obvious beating he had taken. Unsurprisingly, most of the survivors were archers, spared the initial carnage by virtue of distance, easily captured when their precious few arrows had been spent... now one of them was _screaming,_ and Elyon's world snapped brutally back into focus.

 _Hold on, soldier,_ she willed the suffering elf, _I’m going to fix this._

Once she had applied ointment and bandages, she stripped off what remained of her sad excuse for a dress, and washed the rest of her body with fastidious aggression. Dunking her head, she did her best to swish the dirt from her hair before bringing it over her shoulder and squeezing it out.

She had kept the comb that was apparently her only possession tucked into her bodice and now used it to rake a day’s tangles from her hair. Numbly, she wondered whether Roga liked her hair parted down the center or off to the side… Strange as it was after a day of borderline torture, it was this little moment of decision that brought Elyon to the brink of tears.

She could read from a step whether a fighter favored her right or her left, yet somehow her life and all her soldiers’ hung on how pretty she could be for this orc who had taken her freedom.

 _Pull yourself together, Elyon._ She dug the teeth of the comb into her scalp and drew in a deep breath. _Strength, soldier. Focus, and drive forward._

That was the only way she would ever get through this. To treat it as a gruesome skirmish, something to be weathered with perfect focus and inexhaustible willpower. Placing the first tooth of the comb at the back of her head, she drew a burning line down the center of her scalp, decisive as a stroke of the sword.

_Forward._

When Elyon entered the tent, Roga was in her nightshirt, casually looking over a map on a fold-out desk by candlelight.

“You took a long time.”

“Sorry,” Elyon murmured. “I brought your bag?”

There was that smallest tug of amusement at the corner of Roga’s mouth. “I can see that.” The bag clutched to Elyon’s chest was the only thing covering her nudity. Well, that and the bandages wound around her feet and knees. “What happened to your dress?”

“It’s seen better days, ma’am. I can—” _try to wash it,_ Elyon was about to offer, but Roga waved her off.

“Put the bag with my riding tack over there.” A gesture at the corner of the tent.

Elyon did as instructed, pain pulsing through her bandaged feet with each step.

“There’s a nightshirt for you on the bed.”

Looking to the bed, Elyon saw that Roga had indeed come up with a sleeping garment somewhere in the neighborhood of her size. The material looked about as rough as any slave’s clothing, but the sleeves were long, and with the autumn air prickling across her still-damp skin, it looked like heaven itself.

But Elyon deserved neither comfort nor rest while her soldiers were still in danger.

“What do you say, Elyon?” Roga asked when the silence had stretched a beat too long.

“I’m supposed to say ‘Thank you,’ but…” Elyon turned to face Roga naked. “I thought I might do more to show my gratitude.”

“Pardon?”

Elyon took a step forward and knelt. She had meant for the movement to be smooth but a short shock of pain in one of her feet, compounded by exhaustion and her own faltering will, made her buckle to her knees like a broken doll.

“That bad?” Roga said in amusement. “Fine, I’ll look into getting you a pair of boots, delicate thing.”

Elyon swallowed her shame and the anger that rose with it. “Thank you… Master… I’m fine.”

Roga really was a marvel, when Elyon looked at her body alone. After the wash, her gray-green skin was brighter than it had been. Elyon tried to appreciate the curve and tone of the orc’s muscles in a detached way, without thinking about how they could be employed to pin her down, bend her in half, break her… Her mouth had gone dry.

_For her soldiers._

“I-I’d like to make up for last night, Master.”

Roga appeared genuinely surprised. “Really?”

Elyon's vision swam, crawling with fear—

 _Focus,_ the Silver Arrow told herself. _Focus and drive forward._

“Let me pleasure you.”

↞✶↠

_Well_.

Leave it to Elyon Sylvendra to throw in a surprise just when Roga was totally confident in her own plan of attack. The elf had so wrong-footed her that she found the truth leaving her mouth in bemused tones.

“This is… unexpected.”

“But it is what you want from me?”

 _Fuck_. Yes, it was. The elf was stunning, hair hanging in wet ropes around her ethereally sharp face, eyes bright with a searing mixture of pride, pain, and bare steel determination. But… “I wasn’t going to order you to do anything except sleep tonight.” Roga recovered enough balance to take a shot at Elyon’s pride. “To be honest, I expected it would take longer to break you.”

Elyon wheeled out of the attempted attack without losing power. “If my people need me broken now, then I’m broken now,” she said, sounding as ferociously _un_ broken as a creature could.

Ever the skilled combatant. Lull the opponent into a rhythm and then catch her in the offbeat. Dart right when she expected a left. Strike when she expected a feint. Give when she expected resistance. It was how Roga had shifted the balance against the elf in that first glorious clash of steel, when she had let her axe go.

 _You want my weapon, here, have it_ , Roga had said.

Now Elyon came back with: _You want my submission, here, have it._

And for the moment, she had Roga reeling, lost in that imploring silver gaze. It was a clever way for the elf to shift the balance of power; since Roga had made it clear that this _was_ what she wanted, she couldn't dismiss the offer out of hand. But, like any well-landed blow, this one only whetted Roga’s appetite for a fight… and would cost her opponent dearly.

“I don’t think you know what you’re doing, elf.”

“You said you wanted a good slave. This what slaves do, right? This is why you kept me. _Please.”_ Elyon’s voice was low and fierce. “Let me do something for my people.” Slender hands touched Roga’s shins in offering. “Let me…” her conviction faltered, lashes flickering as if to beat back tears… “please you.”

It took every ounce of Roga’s self-control to keep from tackling Elyon to the furs and devouring her right there. The elf was such a cursed beautiful anomaly, so much strength contained in a body so soft and vulnerable, so much bravery in that storm cloud stare… But it was easy to be brave when she didn’t know what she had coming.

“I am not gentle in my appetites.” Roga felt it only fair to give this warning, one warrior to another. “I don’t know if you’re ready to please me the way you intend.”

Elyon swallowed, throat muscles moving subtly against the collar. Her little tongue darted out to lick lips that were wet, and soft, and pink from the cold. But she didn’t give ground. “I don’t mind.” Desperation stole into her voice even as she tried to keep it steady. “If it buys my soldiers your mercy—even just a little—I’ll take it, ma’am. I’ll do anything.”

“You’re very tired,” Roga said, giving the elf this last chance to back down, “and very banged up. This is not going to be easy for you.”

“Then don’t make it easy for me.” Elyon pressed, shaking now in the night air. “Use me. Hurt me. Whatever you have to do. Please…” In a subtle change of tactics, she flicked that hard steel glare up at the orc. “You think I’m afraid of you?”

Roga appreciated the challenge, but it was still insubordination and Elyon would pay for it. She _knew_ she would pay. And she did it anyway, proud in her resistance… and fucking irresistible for it. Damn her.

“Go on then, Silver Arrow. Impress me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger but I wanted to give Roga and Elyon’s mounting tension its own space to breathe. Hope you guys enjoyed.


	12. The Conquest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUPER LONG chapter for you guys today (about 3x the normal length) because I wanted to get us through the conquest. 
> 
> **TW: brief mention of suicide.**
> 
> As always, forgive typos, inconsistencies, etc. (Case in point: I accidentally called Roga’s rhino ‘Enteledon’ in the last chapter because I forgot that I renamed her ‘Ylgor.’ Oops). Basically, this chapter is rough as hell in every way possible. Enjoy.

Elyon had never been this close to Roga without the orc’s hands on her. As she moved between her captor’s knees, she expected a hand on the back of her head, forcing her forward, maybe a hard yank on her hair to punish her slowness. But Roga was still, leaning back in her chair. When Elyon risked a glance up, she found those golden eyes watching her with patient interest.

That was fine, Elyon told herself to keep her nerves in check as she placed her hands on the orc’s knees and slid the hem of Roga’s nightshirt up those muscular thighs. Roga had warned Elyon off this as though Elyon didn’t understand what she was getting into, as though Elyon couldn’t endure a little roughness. But if Roga was going to leave Elyon to her work, with only “impress me” in the way of instruction, then Roga was the one who didn’t know what she had coming.

Elyon had figured out during her earliest sexual encounters that she didn’t enjoy male company—or rather, if she did, it wasn’t the male part of it that she enjoyed. The only boy who had ever brought her close to orgasm had been her school training partner, Derresin, a subpar sword-fighter—and long since dead because of it—but gods had he been gifted with his tongue. Derresin was always the one asking Elyon for help with his footwork, his forms, his stances. That evening behind the bushes of the training yard, with her hands fisted in his dark hair, was the one time _Elyon_ ever said to _him_ , “Teach me how to do that.”

He had, and Elyon had never been with a male after that. Whenever she had sex, she used her tongue, and she was _good_.

Beneath the nightshirt, Roga smelled… well… like Roga. Salt and leather with a fresh wash of shale-touched stream water. Parting her captor’s labia, Elyon was relieved to find that the orc’s cunt was normal—if bigger than what Elyon was used to working with. No spikes or teeth lining the opening, as some horror stories claimed. All familiar territory.

Swallowing, Elyon locked eyes with the orc and drew on her calm so that her pace read as confidence rather than reticence. Because, for all her fear, she was at least confident in this.

Thanks to her rank, Elyon had only ever had sex with subordinates, who looked up to her, deferred to her, and relied on her to lead. When she had a girl like that, Elyon would lie her on her back, touch her gently first, lay kisses along the inside of her thigh up to her quim, murmur reassurances against her skin, tell her how beautiful she was before easing her folds apart with more kisses. Elyon doubted that Roga would appreciate that kind of preamble.

Just as well. Neither did she.

Leaning forward, Elyon went straight in with her tongue, drawing a single reverent lick up the length of her master’s cunt. She had made sure to drink heartily at the stream and the taste of salt brought saliva to her tongue, easing her way on.

Roga’s quim had more texture to it than an elf’s. Elyon could work with that. It made her map clearer as she licked her second soft line from the base of Roga’s slit to the crest of the labia. A third lick and her tongue pressed just slightly harder, finding the clitoris with a last deliberate flick.

For the moment, Elyon knew exactly what she was doing. And like a skirmish, this was something she had to take moment by moment with total focus. One flawless move at a time. As long as she ignored the pain in her own legs, disregarded how easily Roga’s might crush her skull between those thighs, and focused on the mechanics of her work, she could do this.

She could do this.

↞✶↠

Always full of surprises, this elf.

Elyon Sylvendra was evidently not the frigid prude she seemed. She ate cunt with the same skillful intensity she exhibited on the battlefield. Her tongue was laughably small, yet she used it deftly as she did any of her muscles, making up for size with precision, leverage, and painfully elegant timing. She was gentle at first, like a deer at a salt lick, but picked up at a calculated pace.

Just as Elyon lay into a disturbingly effective rhythm, Roga took a handful of that damp hair and pulled her head back.

The slave looked up at her with anxious eyes and flicked her tongue over deliciously wet lips. “Master?”

“You’ve done this before.”

Elyon pressed her lips together, looking almost guilty, and said, “I di— _mmphh!”_ as Roga shoved her face back where it belonged.

The slave took the message and returned to work, diligently building back her rhythm and momentum. Her cunnilingus was not only as precise as her swordplay, it was also as merciless. She swirled the tip of her tongue around Roga’s clitoris, teasing to the perfect moment, before descending on it with her entire mouth and _sucking_ , her tongue driving deep as her cheeks hollowed. Flawless technique… if a little soft.

Not her fault, Roga supposed. For all her skill, Elyon _was_ just an elf.

Intelligent gray eyes were focused on Roga’s face, gauging the orc’s reaction. Roga had never been a demonstrative lover, but Elyon must have read something in her expression. Some tell that made her shift tactics.

Pulling her face into a snarl, she ground into Roga’s clit with the flat of her front teeth, then made her tiny tongue a condensed spearpoint of muscle, pressing, probing, and— _fuck!—_ that was when it really started working. Roga gripped the elf’s hair with a hum of approval as sensation took her.

Of course, the moment it started working was the moment Elyon Sylvendra sealed her fate.

↞✶↠

Elyon was terrifyingly aware the moment she woke the monster. Hard to miss the change in Roga’s gaze as it tipped over an invisible edge from pleasantly interested to _hungry_.

A low growl was the only warning Elyon got before the onslaught. In a brutal surge of desire, Roga grabbed the back of Elyon’s head and _crushed_ the elf’s face into the slick flesh of her cunt.

Elyon might have tried to yell. If she did, the sound was consumed in the orc’s chasm as it dragged hard across Elyon’s chin, her lips, her nose, up to the ridge of her brow and down again with near-bruising force. Roga was riding Elyon, seeking her own pleasure across the landscape of her slave’s face.

 _Stay focused!_ Elyon willed herself. _Stay in control._

But Roga hadn’t left her anything _to_ control.

Whether she extended her tongue, parted her lips, or clenched her teeth, none of that made any difference when Roga was fucking her whole head. In this moment, Elyon wasn’t a lover or even a sex slave. She was a sex _toy_ , a series of ridges for her owner to ride to orgasm.

She couldn’t breathe. Gods, she couldn’t breathe!

Without meaning to, Elyon had started writhing against the orc, hands grabbing helplessly at Roga’s thighs. Somewhere in the assault, she might have tapped a frantic hand on her master’s leg like a fighter begging for respite, but orcs didn’t tap out and Roga ignored her.

Blackness swarmed from the deep dragging Elyon toward unconsciousness. Just as the darkness threatened to overwhelm everything—respite! Cool air touched the damp on Elyon’s face and, when she sucked, a long-overdue breath rushed to fill her lungs—so fast, in fact, that she inhaled a good deal of her own saliva and ended up coughing violently.

But she could breathe. Thank the gods—or curse them, rather—she was alive.

Roga was clearly not finished with her. The hand in Elyon’s hair held her cheek against the inside of the orc’s thigh, barely an inch from that suffocating cunt, just enough that she could catch her breath. The wet slit before Elyon’s nose was still flexing, forebodingly, with desire. As Roga pushed on the back of her head again, Elyon choked down a whimper.

 _Stop,_ she wanted to beg, _please, just five seconds. Let me breathe…_ But she didn’t.

 _Use me,_ she had told Roga, _Hurt me. Whatever you need to do._ And she would stand by that, gods damn it. Even if it meant shutting up and being a good, unresisting fucktoy. She had that much strength left in her.

So, she snatched one last breath and squeezed her eyes shut as Roga forced her back under.

Elyon had never known that oral sex could be so completely dominating. At this point, she had had a lot of things forced into her mouth, but this was something else… Roga consumed her, became her, overwhelmed her every sense. The fucking had grown so violent that Elyon couldn’t properly feel her face, couldn’t quite tell where her mouth ended and the heat of Roga’s arousal began.

She was actually whimpering now, she realized. Desperate for air. Overcome. Frantic to escape the heat before it burned through everything she was. Her hands scrabbled at the orc’s thighs, her rock-hard calves, and sculpted ass, in supplication. Her body began to convulse, but all that only made Roga gyrate harder, faster. Finally, unable to do anything else, Elyon _screamed_.

↞✶↠

The sound rang straight through Roga’s clit. So helpless. So primal. So _angry_.

It was only as the elf writhed between Roga’s thighs, panicked from lack of air, helpless, and totally overpowered that the orc climaxed. Past caring whether her slave passed out, she held Elyon’s face hard between her thighs and rode her until she came. She kept the elf there, clamped, squealing and struggling, through her orgasm.

Finally, she let out a satisfied growl, grinding against the elf’s hot little mouth one last time before easing her grip just slightly, Elyon to draw breath.

The elf gasped wetly against Roga’s sated cunt, eyes watering, cheeks dewy with her master’s come. The sounds she was making were delicious. Aborted half-sobs, punctuated by choked wheezing breaths. Her chest was heaving so hard, Roga thought she might retch. But she controlled the impulse, gripped Roga’s calf to steady herself, and looked up.

Orn damn the elf, there was still a challenge in those steel eyes. _Is that all you’ve got?_ And oh, little elf, what a foolish thing to ask.

Slaves to male orcs might face the harrowing experience of penetration, but most agreed that the lot of a female’s slave was crueler; they had to cope with the sheer stamina of a female orc, and Roga had more stamina than most.

Lifting Elyon up off her knees by the hair, Roga claimed her lips in a dominating kiss. The elf keened in a mixture of surprise and discomfort, shaking as she scrambled to support herself on her bandaged feet. And Roga drove her tongue into her slave’s mouth, probing the warm leather aftertaste of her own orgasm.

Elyon fought the intrusion with her pitifully small tongue, whimpering, hands pushing ineffectually at her owner’s shoulders. Roga punished the resistance with a growl, crushing her mouth into Elyon’s until her tusks dug into the elf’s cheeks and the creature’s delicate neck bent as far back as it would go. Roga’s tongue had pushed so deep that Elyon was gagging, her lithe naked form jerking against her captor, throat muscles contracting helplessly.

In response, Roga jerked the elf from her and deliberately dropped her hard on her battered knees. The elf grunted in pain but before she could get her breath back, Roga gave her cheek a slap that cracked satisfyingly from the wetness.

Elyon’s head snapped to the side so hard she nearly fell to the ground, ropes of white-gold hair flying back over her shoulder.

“Don’t fight when I kiss you.”

“I…” Elyon gasped, eyes unfocused, reeling from the slap. “I d-didn’t mean t— _ahh!”_ Her face contorted in pain as Roga grabbed one of her breasts and _squeezed_.

“And don’t talk back.”

There wasn’t much to the elf’s pliable little tit but Roga found its firm center and dug her thumb in deep before _twisting_.

“S— _aaghh!_ —s-sorry!” Elyon blinked rapidly, trying valiantly to maintain her composure, even on her knees with her breast clamped between powerful fingers and her conqueror’s come still fresh on her face. Roga had to respect the effort, but she would see that strength shattered at her feet by the end of the night.

Smiling, she refocused her grip on Elyon’s nipple, pinched, and rolled. “Sorry, what?”

“Master!” Elyon yelped, eyes screwed shut against the pain, hands balled into fists to keep from fighting back. “Sorry, Master!”

Roga let go of the little breast, already red with the imprint of her fingers, and shoved Elyon so that she sprawled back on the ground, still coughing to get her breath back.

“On the bed.”

One of Roga’s pillows was a long, firm thing practically the size of Elyon herself. She placed the pillow across the bed and laid her trembling elf atop it, lengthwise, on her back. The foot of elevation not only made it hard for a slave to close her legs. It also put her face at the perfect level to be of use when Roga knelt on the bed and straddled her head.

Rough breaths touched the inside of Roga’s thighs, hot and frantic, as Elyon tried to gather herself to endure whatever came next. There was no enduring it, of course. Not with her dignity intact. But let the sweet thing try.

Roga had positioned herself so that she faced the elf’s body—and it Orn, it was such a beautiful body, spread out in the candlelight, battered and naked, legs bandaged from the day’s walk, right breast blushing violet where Roga’s fingers had dug into it, little primrose nipples at attention in the cold, and that soft, sweet cunt waiting between quivering thighs for domination.

One of these days, Roga would have the elf wrestle her. No ropes or handicaps. She wanted to see how well she would do. But Elyon was too damaged today to be anything but a toy.

“Spread your legs, pretty thing.”

When Elyon was slow to obey, Roga punched her. Not full force but hard enough that her knuckles made a satisfying smack on that tight belly and the air left her elf’s lungs in a pained _“Uhn!”_ that tickled Roga’s quim.

On reflex, Elyon started to bring her knees up and arms in to curl around her gut. But Roga snagged those rope-burned wrists and placed the elf’s arms behind her own knees where they sank into the bed. With her arms trapped at the biceps behind her captor’s knees, Elyon couldn’t use them to protect herself… couldn’t use them to do anything, in fact, except clutch imploringly at the orc’s thighs—which she did as Roga grabbed her bandaged knees and forced her legs apart, putting that diminutive rosebud cunt on display. So pretty. So ready to be punished.

“Let’s see if you use your tongue half as well when you’re distracted.”

“Ma’am?” Elyon said, breath straining with nerves as she stared up into her master’s cunt.

“Fail to bring me to orgasm again and there will be consequences. Close your legs and you’ll wish you’d never been born. Understood?”

“Yes, Mm _mpphh!”_ proud Elyon Sylvendra cut off in a wet sputter as Roga sat on her face.

Roga wasn’t playing fair. There was no way Elyon would stay focused through what she had planned. She just wanted to see how long the poor thing would try.

↞✶↠

Elyon could do this.

She just needed to accept that she couldn’t breathe, forget breathing, and focus on what she _could_ do. She could move her tongue, which should be enough. She was managing decently, working her captor’s quim as best she could at the strange angle, even snatching enough breath to stay conscious in between Roga’s casual grinding movements on her face.

Then the first blow landed. A world-shattering crack to the side of her breast. A slap… It had to be a slap—simply given the fact that no bones were broken—but Roga’s slaps landed like gods damned battering rams, the impact cracking the world apart and reverberating through the flesh across Elyon’s whole body.

 _It’s just pain,_ she told herself as Roga’s thunderclap hand struck her again, this time inside her left thigh, then again, and again. Elyon jerked with each blow, but it was only pain, gods damn it. _Think of them as stab wounds,_ she told herself. _Dizzying. But you’re still in the thick of battle. No time to dwell on it._

With her whole being stinging and throbbing, she stayed in the fight, working her tongue so hard it ached, eating Roga’s cunt like it was the only thing in the world.

Then Roga’s hand was between her legs.

 _Fuck_.

A high _“Nnmm!”_ of protest escaped Elyon as her master rubbed a circle around her clitoris. She would have hoped that Roga hadn’t heard but even if she hadn’t, she had surely _felt_ Elyon’s moment of weakness vibrate against her sex.

Elyon dug her heels into the bed—partly to keep from closing her legs and incurring Roga’s wrath and partly in the hopes that the pain in her feet would distract from Roga’s fingers—but a strange thing had started happening. Instead of pulling her out of her arousal, the pain was tangling with it, dragging her further under. She had stopped using her tongue. She had stopped thinking beyond the feel of Roga’s teasing hand on her cunt. Then—

_Smack!_

One of those devastating slaps landed directly on Elyon’s sopping wet clit.

Roga’s hips had lifted just enough that when Elyon screamed, the sound pierced the night—shrill, and damning, and utterly humiliating.

“I believe I told you that if you couldn’t suck me off there would be consequences,” the orc said coolly.

There was no breath in Elyon for _Sorry,_ no breath for _Please, please, I tried._

A shift above her and suddenly the orc was face-to-face with her, a hand around her throat, golden eyes filled with menace. “Slaves who don’t follow instructions get hurt.”

“Please…” Elyon managed finally, after several airless gulps for breath. “Don’t…” _Don’t take this out on my soldiers,_ should have been her first thought. But horrifyingly, all she could think in her haze was _Don’t hurt me. Don’t hit me any more._

Gods. What was happening to her?

“Up, slave.” Hooking a finger through the loop of Elyon’s collar, Roga yanked her upright. “Over my knee.”

 _What?_ Elyon drew the back of her hand across her mouth, struggling to think clearly. She was throbbing all over, dizzy from lack of air, her cheeks heated, her breasts, thighs, and quim _thrumming_. “I... don’t—”

Roga’s hands were on her then. Rough and impatient. The more powerful creature threw Elyon down across her knee and shoved the elf’s face into the furs so that her ass was in the air, bruised breasts squashed against the bed beneath her. If Elyon’s oxygen-deprived mind understood what was about to happen, she wouldn’t process it. Because there was no way.

Even Roga wouldn’t _spank_ a general of the Deep Woods.

↞✶↠

Roga dropped the first stroke with authority. At full force, her open hand was a lightning strike, jolting an electrified gasp from the elf. Elyon’s ass was as firm as it was tiny, but even firm flesh jiggled if you hit it right. And no one hit like Roga.

As the slap rang in the night, Roga gave the sensation a moment to sink in. It seemed only reasonable; much bigger creatures than Elyon often couldn’t think for a solid few seconds after Roga struck them. And Roga did want Elyon lucid, fully aware of her humiliation.

When the breath was back in the elf, Roga dealt her second slap. This one, she brought in from below, a scooping motion that connected with the underside of both cheeks.

“Aah—!” Elyon bit down on a scream as the shockwave jolted straight to her cunt and set the precious little fat on her ass cheeks rippling.

Roga hadn’t thought the elf’s face could get any pinker after the thorough face-fucking, slapping, and exposure to the cold air, but it did, the hot flush shooting straight to the tips of those pointed ears. It was obvious from the shock and affront in Elyon’s posture that no one had ever spanked her before. That was a shame. Because that pert ass was begging for it.

A third slap, followed by a valiant growl of denial.

“No!” the elf braced her palms on the bed and started to push herself up, but Roga shoved down on the back of her neck. Elyon’s palms slid on the furs and she buckled back down over Roga’s knee, but she kept struggling, growling an agonized, _“No! No!”_ evidently unable to bear this particular indignity.

Very cute.

But Roga wasn’t in the mood for ropes or wrestling tonight.

There were more satisfying ways to knock the attitude out of a slave. She lifted a hand and _rained_ blows on the elf’s ass. Full power. Full speed. Elyon tried to struggle, of course. But the shock of being struck with such force, in such quick succession, left any creature scattered and convulsing, unable to mount any meaningful resistance.

Under the onslaught, Elyon could only scrabble and squirm in agony. One of the elf’s injured feet beat helplessly against the furs. At one point, her right hand went to Roga’s grip on the back of her neck in a fruitless attempt to pry it loose. That ended up fisted in her own hair as if she could generate enough pain there to distract from the brutal thrashing Roga was giving her buttocks.

By the time Roga’s palm started to sting, Elyon’s ass had gone a brilliant shade of pink, deepening as broken blood vessels bled violet beneath the skin.

By the time true bruises formed, all notion of resistance had left the elf. She had both arms over her head, hands clutching her hair in agony, and she was making a strained, repetitive sound into the furs, which Roga eventually identified as _“Please… please… please…”_

Roga eased up then, only because her right arm had started to tire. Trailing fingertips over her trembling, beautifully colored work, she smiled. The lightest of squeezes and Elyon moaned—audible, despite her best efforts to muffle the sound in the furs. From there, out of curiosity, Roga snuck her fingers down the underside of Elyon’s ass to the little slit beneath—and paused.

Still wet…

Elyon stopped breathing.

Still _dripping_ wet.

Well… wasn’t that interesting.

↞✶↠

Elyon had lost a bit of time there during the spanking, any coherent thought drowned in that rain of raw, pulsating pain.

It wasn’t until Roga’s fingers made their way between her legs again that Elyon’s breath stopped in horror. Because her clitoris was pulsing as hard as her beaten ass—not with bruises… but with _need_.

That wasn’t right, Elyon thought. So much pain should have driven any vestige of pleasure from her body. Any juices Roga had managed to wring from her—probably more than Elyon would have liked to acknowledge—during the fingering should have dried up during the awful and utterly shameful beating.

Maybe the impact of the spanking had reverberated between Elyon’s legs somehow, creating stimulation similar to touch. It was a mistake of biology. Not real arousal. Not anything to worry ab—

Roga’s middle finger made a squelching sound as she pressed it into the opening and Elyon shuddered as she felt just how slick she was. Her mutinous quim swallowed the end of Roga’s finger eagerly, no resistance whatsoever, and Elyon’s eyelids fluttered against the furs.

“Hmm,” the orc hummed above her.

And fuck, that note of hungry curiosity did not bode well.

The finger withdrew and Elyon didn’t move. There was no reason for her to be wet after such brutal treatment. None. No reason for her to yearn for that finger back inside her. If she just focused on her breathing and the sobering effects of the pain, she could control this, make it go away. There was no reason—

_Smack!_

Roga’s hand landed hard across her left ass cheek and, in her surprise, Elyon couldn’t stop the shout that leapt from her lips.

At this point, there may as well have been no skin on her backside at all, it was so raw. Roga couldn’t be continuing the beating. She couldn’t… not if she ever wanted her slave to walk again. Elyon’s whole body flinched at the next touch, but this one was gentle, slowly circling the stinging outline of that last blow. Then—

_Smack!_

“Ahh!” Elyon yelped again, caught by surprise. The touch that followed this stroke was just as gentle but more dangerous, slipping between Elyon’s legs to rub at her inexplicably aching quim.

“No—” Elyon started to rise, only for the hand to withdraw from her cunt and slam into her ass so hard she pitched forward onto her face in the furs.

“Don’t tell your master ‘no,’ sweet thing.” There was somehow more menace in Roga’s affectionate tones than her anger. “And don’t lie.”

As Roga trailed fingernails lightly over her ass, Elyon felt her quim twitch and buried her head in the furs again, defeated.

Roga kept torturing her that way: strike, caress, strike, caress—maybe a squeeze, varying her tempo just enough that Elyon never quite had a read on it, never quite braced herself for the next assault. Elyon’s ass was on fire, stinging so badly that Roga’s lightest touch was agony and each new stroke made her world blank for a split second. And somehow, impossibly, the pain all seemed to go straight to her clit, making need knot there, tighter and tighter, until it was too much to bear and a smothered, “ _Please_ …” strained past her lips.

“What was that?” Roga’s hand paused between Elyon’s legs, about to stroke, or squeeze, or spank, Elyon didn’t know. She only knew that she needed it _now_. And more. _More_. _Now_.

 _“Pleeease—”_ Her stomach turned when she realized that she had been a breath from _begging_ the orc to touch her. To _fuck_ her. _Please_.

Roga, the cruelest creature in the universe, still didn’t move. “Please what?”

The stillness was too much. Elyon growled, fists clutched in the furs, and arched her spine, cat-like, grinding back onto Roga’s hand.

“I see.” Roga rewarded the movement in one moment—with a finger massaging Elyon’s clit—and punished it the next with a hard slap that left the elf gasping, bucking, half-mad with desire.

“It seems to me, Silver Arrow”—Roga drummed contemplative fingers on the burning plane of Elyon’s ass as her pet convulsed—“that someone has a complicated relationship with pain…”

Elyon couldn’t answer. Couldn’t think. She needed Roga to keep touching her. She needed fingers, anything. Now. Damn it. _Now!_

When Roga tossed the elf off her lap onto her back, Elyon immediately reached between her own legs to rub, press, do _something_ to alleviate the pressure. Her fingers were almost there when gray hands gripped her upper arms and jerked her upward so hard the whiplash nearly snapped her neck. Roga lifted her in that bruising grip and held her there at eye level as if she weighed nothing.

“Did I give you permission to touch yourself?” That coarse, dominating growl knocked Elyon’s insides into a confusing flutter of fear and heat.

The orc had forced her arms behind her so hard that her elbows were touching, thrusting her injured breasts out. A helpless position. She squirmed to free herself but only succeeded in bruising herself on that immovable grip… more pain added to the screaming need between her legs.

“Well?” Roga demanded and, when the elf didn’t answer, slammed her down.

Not on her back this time. No, this time she lifted Elyon high so that the elf’s legs were parted above her knee and drove her straight down. Elyon’s aching cunt _slammed_ into Roga’s knee and the world went to pieces.

↞✶↠

The elf’s eyes had rolled back in her head, eyelids fluttering. Even as she bellowed in pain and then shook, her hips jerked needily into Roga’s thigh. Still seeking stimulation. A primal moan strained through her teeth.

If Roga didn’t know better, she would have said that the elf was enjoying the pain. Not intellectually, perhaps. Her _pride_ was not enjoying it, but her soft little sex had other opinions.

Experimentally, because Roga always needed to see how far she could push an interesting thing, she threw her slave down on the furs surrounding the bed. Elyon landed hard on her back and twisted in pain when her spanked ass hit the ground.

Before Elyon had a chance to do something stupid like crawl away or try to touch herself again, Roga grabbed one of the creature’s bandaged legs and hauled the elf toward her. Keeping an iron grip around that ankle, Roga stomped between Elyon’s legs, driving her bare heel hard into that soft, wet little cunt.

Elyon’s head slammed back, her mouth open in pure agony but the blow seemed to have robbed her of the breath needed to scream. She arched there, a picture of perfect anguish for a moment before starting to struggle.

One of her hands clutched at Roga’s foot in an attempt to push it away, but Roga had no intention of letting her go yet. In response, she yanked harder on the elf’s trapped leg and twisted her heel in _deep_ , crushing Elyon’s slit, labia, and clitoris in one slick, squirming little package of punishment. It had to be devastatingly painful—even an orc should have been shrieking by now.

Elyon clenched her teeth and struggled to breathe, but made little sound. A stunning testament to her willpower. But stupid all the same.

Roga put more of her weight into that heel and dug a thumb into the bottom of Elyon’s bandaged foot. The moan that finally clawed its way past Elyon’s steel layers of control wasn’t just a sound of pain. It had a shuddering undercurrent of something deeper. Elyon’s spine curved into a dramatic bridge, head thrown back, hands clenched in the furs.

Then, even as Roga increased the pressure, making her captive whine in distress, the elf started grinding back. It was a halting motion, clearly involuntary. But Elyon’s quim was still wet on the sole of Roga’s foot. It was certain, then: for all Elyon’s strength, some deep, primal, part of her liked being punished, liked being spanked, and desperately wanted to fuck herself Roga’s foot.

Roga might have drawn out the torture a little longer. Teased that needy little cunt with her toes. Stomped a few more times just to hear the smack of wet flesh. But Elyon was too much drawn into that naked bow, hair spilled around her in total disarray, her mouth gasping submission.

Hunger overtook the orc and she went in for the kill. Surging from the bed, she tore her nightshirt off and bore down on her trembling prey without mercy.

“You want to orgasm?” She bent the elf into the splits as she had that first night, jerked those small hips up a fraction higher, and put her cunt to Elyon’s. “Work for it, slave.”

Elyon looked up at her with petrified eyes but, for once, had no problem obeying.

Her body did it for her, hips jerking, guttering, and grinding against her master’s in a fitful frenzy of power and plasticity unlike anything Roga had ever experienced. All the liquid lightning that made Elyon a devastating sword-fighter melted into a rolling, wriggling mess against Roga’s cunt as the elf rutted, lips parted, panting, her modest tits bouncing with the effort. Her flexible spine gave her a broader range of motion than most creatures and the little noises she made—of struggle and of need—brought an urgent desire to boil between Roga’s own legs.

With girls this size, there was always a faint worry that the full intensity of Roga’s orgasm, cunt on cunt, would break something. But Elyon was strong for her size. She could take it, Roga decided—she _would_ take it—and enjoy it.

Like the slut she was.

“Brace yourself, pretty thing,” she said, pinning Elyon’s leg back harder. “This is going to hurt.”

↞✶↠

Elyon was lost.

Her being had reduced to the throbbing knot of need between her legs. In that carnal absence of meaning, she welcomed the stimulation of Roga’s sex on hers, pressed into it, ground on it when ordered. Anything to ease this hunger. And when Roga went from grinding to thrusting—violently—Elyon welcomed that too.

It hurt. Gods, it hurt. Roga’s pelvis drove into hers so hard she thought it might break bone, the orc’s hand dug into her battered calf, pinning Elyon’s leg back against her shoulder so hard that her thigh crushed into her bruised breast. But Elyon took it… more than took it. She rolled with the onslaught—and _into_ it, meeting the ruthless impact with all the power and flexibility of years of combat.

As she gasped, Roga shoved rough fingers into her mouth, choking her.

 _“Ghhgk!”_ Elyon gagged around the intrusion, eyes watering, and tasted the sour salt of her own arousal on those fingers. Damning shame—had she been able to think.

Roga’s eyes came into focus above Elyon—bright gold and ravenous—and without prompting, Elyon sucked, swirled her tongue around the orc’s fingers, hollowed her cheeks, moaned around the knuckles in supplication. Anything to keep her attacker moving, rolling, giving her more.

Elyon came with her legs spread wide, Roga’s pleasure crushed over hers, Roga’s collar around her neck, Roga’s fingers down her throat.

Total domination.

And it was _good_. Oh gods, Elyon had had orgasms before, but none like this. This one consumed her—mind, flesh, and soul. She whimpered as it happened, eyes rolling back into oblivion, her body shuddering from her chest to her curling toes. Roga had no mercy at all and kept ploughing into her open legs straight through the orgasm, driving it on until Elyon was mewling and the whole world disintegrated.

Elyon was still moaning with the aftershocks, lost in a haze when Roga—her dominator, her world—growled, “You’re not done yet, elf. There’s one more thing you need to do for me...”

↞✶↠

Roga had nearly orgasmed herself at the ferocious shudder of submission beneath her. That frantic guttural moan around her fingers had to be worth a thousand victories on the field. But there was one part of the elf that Roga still needed to dominate. One front she had yet to conquer.

“Scream,” she ordered as gray eyes blinked up at her as if from beneath the surface of a forest pool. “Cry. Nice, and long, and loud. Scream so the prisoners on the other end of camp can hear how much you like being spread and fucked.”

She gripped a handful of Elyon’s ass, making the overstimulated elf writhe and whine with pain. And Orn, the poor thing was actually getting hot again, cheeks flushed, hips twitching into Roga’s, despite her obvious exhaustion.

“Let’s let them hear what a slut you are for punishment.”

Elyon’s pride made its last stand in the form of tears, standing glassy in those storm-cloud eyes. This was the gaze of a creature who knew she was defeated in every possible way, knew there was nothing left for her to do but concede and cry out her shame. The arrogant thing just didn’t know how. Fortunately, Roga was here to help her.

Releasing the elf’s ass, she backhanded her slave across the face. As Roga’s hips resumed their rhythm, she slapped her toy across the thighs, the face, the tits, dug fingers into the elf’s bandaged calf, bit her neck just beneath the collar, then just above. All the while, what was left of the Silver Arrow flinched, and gasped, thrashed pitifully from the pain—but held out, smothering her agony in silence.

“You can do it,” Roga kissed one of those flushed cheeks, then extended her tongue to flick at Elyon’s ear.

“Nnn!” The elf twisted, jerking her head away and to the side. This, of course, did nothing but expose her opposite ear, which Roga licked greedily. Her tongue was longer than Elyon’s and more powerful, carving a hot crescent through the shell of the elf’s ear, making those wet gray eyes go wide with fresh shock.

“Aahh!” Elyon writhed and whimpered as Roga trapped her head where it was with a hand clamped around her face. _“Hnn! Nnn!”_ Desperate breaths washed hot across Roga’s palm, as she dug her fingers ruthlessly into the silky-soft flesh of the elf’s cheeks.

This was the final drive. The last of Sylvendra’s strength was about to give and Roga was going to savor every second of it.

Leaning in, she gave that tender ear another hard lick, rolled her hips into the elf, and put her teeth right on the wet cartilage to growl, “Scream, Sylvendra, like the whore you are.”

The little creature was hyperventilating, eyes wide and filled with the primal fear of an animal trapped in a corner, staring down its end.

Rutting again on the elf’s beaten cunt, Roga put her teeth around that ear and swirled her tongue around the tip, making Elyon suck in a tremulous gasp. Then, before she could let it out, Roga bit down.

That did it.

And Roga came to the music of her most ferocious enemy finally breaking beneath her.

↞✶↠

Maybe Elyon had always known that she enjoyed pain. When she took a blow, the sensation often came with a pleasing thrill, but she had always chocked that up to battle fever, that brilliant hit of excitement that so many fighters experienced when faced with a challenge. Maybe her heart had pounded inexplicably fast the few— _very_ few—times another elf had managed to pin her in training. Maybe, a few times, she had gripped her own throat as she touched herself. Maybe she had dwelled a little long on the feeling of her sword instructor’s boot on her back when the older elf had decided to knock a bit of the arrogance out of her. Maybe the heat in her cheeks had been a little more than embarrassment.

Her pain tolerance had always been high, even for a soldier. Maybe that was why she had never known…

 _Well, none of that matters now,_ she thought as she lay spread-eagled on Roga’s bed, watching the candlelight dance with shadows on the canvas overhead. She had lost control and come like a whore as Roga hurt her. And no matter how she combed back through her past, and rationalized, and wondered how she could have missed this about herself, she couldn’t change that. She knew now that there was part of her that enjoyed being punished. And worse—though it seemed impossible that anything could be worse than knowing such a thing about oneself— _Roga_ knew.

It wasn’t a question of whether Elyon’s master would use this information cruelly. She was Roga. The question was _how_ she would use it. What kind of nightmarish games would she come up with? And could Elyon survive them?

Did she even want to?

Lying bruised and broken on her captor’s bed, Elyon had never felt emptier. Unbidden, she imagined poor Gwynn hanging in that cage, and, in her weakness, envied the younger elf, who had had only her own life to worry about.

What a blessing to be able to escape this shame when Elyon was trapped here. Worthless. Alone. Helpless to even end it as the humiliations grew worse... and worse... and worse.

↞✶↠

Roga considered that perhaps she had overused her new toy.

Many slaves couldn’t survive two minutes of Roga at full intensity. She had subjected Elyon to two _hours_ of fucking, fondling, and punishment—and this after a day of trekking cross country with no shoes. Roga had only pushed the elf so hard because was… well… she was _Elyon Sylvendra_. But even a creature as strong as the Silver Arrow could be pushed beyond the ability to recover.

In the aftermath, Roga had rolled off Elyon to lounge back against her pillows. Leave the elf for a bit, she thought, give her the space to breathe and recover at her own pace.

But it had been a good few minutes now and Elyon hadn’t moved. She lay like a broken doll where Roga had left her, small, bruised, and so pale in the cold. If not for the rise and fall of those supple breasts, Roga might have taken her for dead. It was the eyes that turned Roga’s curiosity to outright worry. There was usually such a sharpness to Elyon’s gaze, even in her sadness or her fear… but it wasn’t there now. The eyes that stared into the nothing above were devoid of all but a bland and permeating despair. Those were the eyes of a slave.

Roga didn’t like it.

“Hey.” Reaching out, she brushed a knuckle across Elyon’s cheek. “You did well.”

The elf’s eyelids flickered and her gaze turned to Roga. Still utterly lifeless.

“Are you hurt badly?”

Elyon shook her head before getting her voice to work. “No.” The words came out soft and ragged from far too much screaming. “No, ma’am.”

“Good. Why don’t you sit up for me?” Roga phrased it as gently as possible but she was still the master and it was still, in essence, an order.

Grimacing, Elyon rolled onto her side and pushed herself to her hands and knees. Every muscle shook, setting the candlelight shivering on her golden hair. She hadn’t cried through the whole ordeal, but she looked like she might now. Both her knees and ass were far too battered at this point to bear weight. Her breath hitched and a wretched sob tried its damnedest to get past her teeth, but she clenched a little tighter and held it where it was.

“Or just… on your elbow.” Shifting closer, Roga rearranged the elf into a position that maybe wouldn’t make her faint from pain. “That’s fine.”

“Please…” Elyon was beyond exhausted, but somewhere in that little body, she found the strength to gather herself and look up at her tormentor. “Master…”

“Yes?” Roga didn’t usually feel this kind of sympathy for a groveling slave, but Elyon had endured so well that if she wanted to beg for rest, or more clothing, or the whole damn jar of healing salve, Roga would probably give it to her.

Elyon didn’t ask for any of those things.

With what was left of her voice, she croaked, “My soldiers…?”

In her surprise, Roga laughed and defaulted to her usual playful cruelty. “Demands on that front already? After one half-decent night of service?”

Elyon really looked like she would cry then. She bit her lip before speaking again in a carefully controlled voice. “I’m not demanding anything, Master. Just asking… begging you… please…”

Gripping Elyon by the chin, Roga brought the elf in close. Comparatively, the movement was not brutal. But it made Elyon flinch. Not out of fear of being hurt, Roga realized. It was fear of being rejected.

“What about your soldiers, little one?”

Elyon’s response, while tremulous, was worded decisively. She had thought this through. “I don’t want them raped.”

Roga waited a beat for the elf to add something more, then tilted her head. “That’s it?” she said in surprise. “That’s your only request?”

“Yes, Master.”

Elyon was playing her hand carefully. Had she come out with a list: _I don’t want my soldiers raped, beaten, starved, disfigured, etcetera,_ Roga would have had the opening to bargain her down. She had picked one and put all her efforts tonight toward it.

“I believe Azreth told you that prisoners’ rations are poor,” Roga said. “You’re not going to request _food_ for your people?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What if I don’t feed them?”

“I presume you’re feeding them enough to keep them alive, and they’re trained well. They can march a long time on whatever scraps you can spare—if they’re determined. Don’t break them and they can march indefinitely.”

Clever girl. Frame things in terms of how Roga might benefit.

“And you don’t think the beatings might break them?”

“Didn’t break me.” Elyon’s voice was flat but Roga smiled at the knowledge that her spark wasn’t gone entirely.

“Mmm, I’d argue you haven’t had a real beating yet,” she said and didn’t miss the quiet quiver of dread that ran through her slave. “Not one from me. But point taken. I’ll consider your request.”

With the next breath, a tiny fraction of the tension left Elyon’s shoulders.

She seemed to understand, painfully, that this was all she could expect to get in exchange for her two hours of shattering torture. She bit her lip, nodded, and somewhere found the strength to say, “Thank you, Master,” sounding as miserable as any creature Roga had ever heard.

 _Servile by nature_. Kordath had called elves. _Servile by nature…_ Roga rolled the words around in her head as she ran a thumb along the line of Elyon’s jaw. She had extracted the behavior of a good slave, yes, but it was also the only course of action for a leader trying to protect her people. Even if Elyon had ultimately enjoyed the fucking, she had only submitted to it to save her elves. Roga wasn’t sure if that counted as a predisposition to servitude.

The masochism, on the other hand… that was something Roga looked forward to exploring more deeply. Another night.

Standing, Roga got a bucket of water, brought it to the bed, and dipped a cloth to clean the come and sweat from Elyon’s body. There was that tiny twitch as the cold cloth touched her face, that military discipline holding her still.

“Master…” the elf whispered, voice threadbare.

“Hmm?”

“Doesn’t the slave usually clean up?”

The answer was ‘yes,’ but if Elyon was looking for an excuse to get out of Roga touching her, she would be disappointed. “If you clean yourself, you clean me too.”

“May I?”

“Can you stay conscious?” Roga asked in amusement.

A nod.

”Then, sure.”

↞✶↠

Elyon took the cloth in her hands because she needed to hold something, to have control of something, however small. She hated how grateful she was that Roga had allowed her this tiny chore. But if she didn’t have a task to focus on, if she had to lie still and be a toy for one more second, she was going to lose what little remained of her sanity.

When she was done, she rinsed the cloth in the bucket one last time, wrung it out, and slung it over the back of Roga’s chair to dry overnight. She had barely made it the few steps to the chair on her ruined feet and, now that she was there, wasn’t sure she would make it back. Holding the back of the chair for support, she swayed and wondered miserably if she had to go back to the bed at all. Couldn’t she just crumple to the ground right here and pass out, now that her duties were done?

“Come here, slave.”

Elyon bit down a grimace and forced herself to limp to the bed. She folded onto the nearest corner, as far from Roga as possible, and rested her weight predominantly on her left hip and arm to take the pressure off her backside. It would be alright if she slept here, wouldn’t it? At Roga’s feet like a hound, away from those cruel hands? This was where Hemlock had slept after her night of "education."

“No, stubborn thing,” Roga sighed and patted the pillows beside her. “Up here. And there’s no need to be so tense. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Elyon was skeptical, but what could she do other than obey? Putting as little weight as possible on her ravaged knees, she dragged herself up the bed and into place beside her captor. Lying on her back was not an option with her ass spanked raw. And her front wasn't much better after the thorough biting and battering Roga had given her breasts.

When it came to lying on her side, Elyon succumbed to emotion and turned away from the orc. It was a stupid move from every vantage—from Elyon’s military training, which said don’t turn your back on an enemy, from her present voice of reason, which said that shunning Roga wouldn’t help her fellow elves—but she was tired, and she was weak, and she didn’t _want_ to face Roga. All she wanted was to curl into her self-loathing and let it kill her.

But she couldn't even have that.

Unsurprisingly, a strong hand gripped her shoulder and turned her over. Elyon winced in pain as her bruised ass pressed into the furs and the orc loomed over her.

The night was deep now, the last candle burning low beside the bed, and the only clear thing was the golden glow of Roga’s eyes.

“Your place is here, at my side, in my bed.” Roga's voice was calm but heavy with authority. “Every night, without exception. I won’t have you running off to sleep in a far corner of the tent anymore. Understood?”

Elyon shrank back into the furs, wishing she could cease to exist. “Understood, Master.” She didn’t realize she had closed her eyes to brace for a blow until it didn’t come… and a hand brushed fondly through her hair.

“Good girl.” Roga pulled the covers up over them both—blessed warmth—and blew out the candle.

↞✶↠

The thing that woke Roga in the night wasn’t even a noise. Just a silent shaking under the furs beside her. It took her a moment to realize that Elyon was crying, curled up under the covers at the far side of the bed, grief racking her body without a sound.

Roga considered that, had they been comrades, the kindest thing would have been to feign ignorance. Let her spend her weakness alone and save her dignity. But they were not comrades. Elyon was Roga’s property—from her body, to her secrets, to her deepest weaknesses. So, Roga did something that felt almost unforgivably cruel. She put an arm around the suffering soldier and pulled her close.

Elyon flinched but didn’t resist. In return for the compliance, Roga didn’t force the closeness, didn’t grab hard or press into any of Elyon’s bruises as she gathered the shuddering elf to her chest; it wasn’t the time for that sort of dominance. Instead, she stroked a hand over Elyon’s hair and slowly, slowly rubbed her slave's back beneath the furs.

“I’ve got you, Elyon Sylvendra,” she said into the elf’s hair. A statement of intimacy, as much as ownership. “I’ve got you.”

Elyon quaked with emotion, feeling as though she might shake apart right there in Roga’s arms.

Small hands touched Roga’s chest as if desperately, desperately wanting to push the orc away. But what would that accomplish? _Nothing_ , Elyon seemed to realize. And oddly, that was what broke her. Not the barefoot march, or the beating, or the hours of humiliating rape. It was in this moment of total tenderness that the elf came apart, buried her head in Roga’s chest, and _sobbed_.

Once the dam broke, the surge was unrelenting. Elyon wept uncontrollably, wailing almost like a child, her chest heaving with it, her breathing in shambles. There shouldn’t have been enough strength left in that beaten little frame, Roga thought, to sob so hard. But at the same time, she recognized that the elf needed this outpouring with the same overdue agony that she had needed release under Roga’s fingers.

So, Roga didn’t mock Elyon’s pain, didn’t punish it, didn’t even attempt any reassurance. She just rode it out with her, holding her in steady arms, petting her softly through the grief. By the time Elyon’s breathing evened out, the elf was asleep in her master’s arms and Roga’s breasts were soaked with tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so 12 chapters and over 50k words for our leads to finally fuck. Don’t worry, I’ve officially updated the tags to include "Slow Burn" (and “Inappropriate Use of a Greatsword” since that sure wasn’t in the original plan).
> 
> I didn’t love the rapid-fire head-hopping in this chapter, but this is such a pivotal scene for both characters that I didn’t want to leave either POV out in the cold. Let me know how you felt about that? Also, about the triple-length chapter?? I generally prefer to keep reading chunks bite-sized for those who prefer to read in more digestible pieces. But I also don’t like cutting a chapter short without completing its emotional arc and this 8.7k-word chunk was structured as a single arc. I thought about splitting it in two ("Conquest I" and "Conquest II") and just releasing them on the same day but idk... let me know what you’d prefer in the future.
> 
> Thanks, Sera, for reminding me about the sensitive ears a few chapters ago. It made a good closer to “Conquest I” ;)


	13. Nothing to Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it’s been a while and this isn’t the longest chapter. Work has been crazy, so I squeeze in writing where I can. I also took a little trial and error figuring out the direction I wanted to take in the wake of the last chapter but here we are at last, with a direction.

Roga was still for a long time after she woke. She wasn’t particularly sleepy. It was just that Elyon was so damn soft sound asleep under her arm.

From what Roga had observed, Elyon Sylvendra had an internal clock that usually woke her before dawn, but the previous day had exhausted the elf so deeply that she was still out cold. After three straight days of tension, the perfect lines of her form had finally relaxed into a stunning pale gold softness. No crease of thought or pain between her sharp blonde brows, no bowstring tightness in her shoulders. Her silken head was warm on Roga’s bicep and her lips were parted slightly so that each breath brushed sweetly across her master’s breast.

Roga normally didn’t have more than a passing soft spot for cute things. Normally, she would have been itching to choke Elyon awake, see those piercing eyes fly open in panic, and feel the wiry creature struggle beneath her. But the itch was absent. Perhaps because Elyon had so thoroughly and beautifully earned this rest. Set against the brutality of the previous night, it felt right to hold her here in total tenderness as light crept through the canvas.

But it couldn’t last forever. As the movement of slaves became audible in the camp beyond, the sharp-eared elf stirred. Gray eyes opened, blinked, Elyon inhaled sharply—and Roga caught the elf by the upper arm before she had a chance to do something stupid. Lithe muscle strained reflexively against the orc’s grip, waking Roga’s urge to dominate. She pinned her prisoner back on the bed, happily and with authority.

Back to business as usual.

↞✶↠

Every inch of Elyon clamped in terror beneath the orc. It was one thing to wake to the sight of a monster. Another to remember that she was this monster’s prisoner. Another to remember that she had submitted to rape at those hands. Another to remember that part of her had enjoyed it. And then, finally, to remember that she had crumbled beneath the shame of it all and cried like a child into her rapist’s chest…

And, gods, now she had nearly struck Roga. _Stupid, Elyon. You worthless, useless cur._ Roga could easily use it as an excuse to revoke the little ground Elyon had gained.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

“You’re forgiven, my dear.” That fond voice, so gentle it could only be mockery, brought back all the previous night’s humiliations.

Elyon shivered, feeling every bruise anew. “Thank you,” she said, submissive. Pathetic. 

Roga grunted in acknowledgment and settled back beside Elyon, though she kept one arm slung over the elf, as though they were lovers.

“I… I’m supposed to attend you,” Elyon remembered, pitifully relieved at the thought. She could go naked, if need be, on her wounded feet to the center of camp. At least she wouldn’t be here in the bed where she had been so shamefully, irreparably broken.

“It’s well past dawn, sweet. A bit late for that.”

“Forgive me,” Elyon said again, subconsciously straining just slightly against Roga’s arm in attempt to rise. “I usually wake earlier.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“I could—still—”

“I have an entire camp to wait on me, elf. Stay.”

So, even this small escape was denied her. “Y-yes, ma’am,” she whispering and sank back down beneath her captor’s arm, defeated and miserable.

Roga’s grip eased, a thumb brushing gently over Elyon’s shoulder. Free of the pressure, Elyon turned onto her side. The movement put her slightly closer to Roga—a show of willingness and submission, she hoped—but more importantly, it took the pressure off her ass, which had started aching afresh when Roga put her on her back.

“Still feeling it, are you?” With a tusked grin, Roga slid a hand down Elyon’s naked waist, round her hip, to cup her ass. And Elyon couldn’t help it. She hid her face, burying it in the furs to cover her shame.

The hand left Elyon’s ass and she went tense all over. But Roga’s hands didn’t return to her skin, in intimacy or violence. Instead, Roga shifted so that she was over the elf and placed a hand on either side of her; even with her face buried, Elyon felt those powerful palms press into the bed by each of her shoulders as Roga leaned into them. Elyon felt her owner’s presence like a cage, rippling muscle around her, the sound of the orc’s sigh and the click of the bones in her hair above.

“Elyon.” Roga nudged her with a tusk, with the rough affection of a mother animal nosing her calf to stand. “What’s the point?” Her voice was low and soft. “What do you have left to hide from me?”

The words cut deeper than anything else she could have said.

 _What_ was _the point?_

Roga had already probed every possible facet of Elyon’s shame—some Elyon herself hadn’t known existed until she was bucking, and begging, and crying under her captor’s touch. Elyon was a weakling and a whore. She knew it. Roga knew it. What was left to do but submit to that reality and be done with it?

Slowly, Elyon uncurled to face Roga, who was wearing a pleased smile. “There’s a good girl.”

When the tent flap shifted, Elyon looked to see who it was—and regretted it.

Azreth stood in the entrance to the tent with the usual platter of rice and meat. The moment Elyon’s eyes fixed on him was the moment his settled on her, a battered doll beneath her master’s smirk. Elyon looked away immediately, but not quite fast enough to miss the sentiment in those magma eyes. _Pity_.

Fuck him. Her hands curled into fists. Who was he to pity her?

“Another portion, Azreth,” Roga ordered as the slave shuffled forward and placed the meal on Roga’s table, “for the elf. And while you’re at it, tell your master I want to speak with her.”

“Yes, ma’am,” came the low reply and the fabric rustle of the tent flap closing behind the demon.

Elyon didn’t realize she had wrapped her arms around herself until Roga rumbled gently. “Elly, dear, what are you doing with those arms?”

Covering herself, Elyon realized. Fuck. Could she do nothing right? “Sorry.” The surge of self-loathing turned outward, became sharp and Elyon slammed her own wrists back against the bed above her head. “Better? Master. Now that you can see all of my weak points?” Insubordination, but the pain was so raw in Elyon’s voice that it came out half like a plea.

Roga’s expression was as pitying as Azreth’s but so much worse for the tinge of amusement in it. “But that’s the fun of you, Elly.” Roga trailed fingers back and forth over the elf’s exposed belly, her proffered breasts. “I don’t think we’ve even hit on half your weak points yet.” Her fingers circled one of Elyon’s nipples, still bitterly tender from twisting. “I’m still discovering them.”

Elyon swallowed, fisted her hands in the furs to keep her hands still.

“I think you’re still discovering some too.” Roga was smiling, casually playing with an aching nipple. “We’ll have to map them together.”

In all Elyon’s visions of the torture that might await her upon defeat, she had never conceived of anything like this terror—staring into Roga’s eyes and knowing that her promise was not empty, that she would turn up every weak spot in Elyon’s soul and tease it, taste it, finger it, sink her teeth into it…

Elyon bit her lip and realized that she was shamefully on the brink of tears once again. “Please…” She didn’t know what she was begging for. _Mercy_. But what did that mean anymore?

“Please what, pretty girl?”

Elyon was spared a response by Magdur of all people.

“You wanted to see me, ma’am?” the lieutenant asked from beyond the canvas.

“Yes, lieutenant. Come in.”

This time, Elyon didn’t turn to the tent entrance, though it hardly eased the shame. She could still feel Magdur’s gaze brush over her and it wasn’t hard to imagine the satisfied expression she wore at seeing the ungrateful elf so humbled.

“We move out on your schedule, as planned,” Roga said. “Inform the troops that no one is to lay a hand on our elven prisoners.”

“Ma’am?”

“No elf will be used, or flogged, or struck without my explicit permission. Double their rations for today and have Grun do a cursory check for infection—especially the ones I… _collected_ from.” A soft touch along Elyon’s ear and she realized that Roga was referring to the elves she had mutilated for Elyon’s disobedience.

She lay frozen in surprise as Roga dismissed her lieutenant.

“That…” she stammered when she found her voice. “I didn’t ask for all that.”

“You’re a slave. Do you imagine you get precisely what you ask for all the time?” It was phrased like censure but Roga clearly wasn’t angry.

“No, ma’am,” Elyon demurred, just to be safe. “Apologies.”

“I will treat your soldiers how I like, based on how I’m feeling about your service. You pleased me last night.”

“I wasn’t obedient,” Elyon pointed out, confused. “I—”

“You pleased me.” Roga ran calloused fingers through Elyon’s hair. “A slave should leave it at that.”

But Elyon _couldn’t_ leave it at that. _Leave nothing to chance_. That was one of the first rules when going into battle against orcs. Against a force bigger, stronger, better organized, and better armed than one’s own, the margin for error was too small for guesswork. A victory on the field was meaningless unless the commander could say how she’d done it and replicate the success. Elyon needed to understand _what_ had pleased Roga if she was going to keep winning—or rather… losing successfully.

“You liked it when I struggled,” she observed, painful as it was to review the slick-hot horrors of the previous night, “when I fought back, told you ‘no,’ made you beat me…” Her voice had gone quiet, barely audible, but she had to finish the thought. Had to face it. _“That_ pleased you.”

“I’m a conqueror by nature, Elly. It’s not that complicated. _Your_ nature on the other hand…”

Elyon bit the inside of her cheek and tried for a cold glare, but she could feel it being offset by the heat in her face.

“Well, it’s quite the puzzle, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elyon agreed frigidly.

“You know…” Roga’s fingers had moved from Elyon’s breast to rest on the ring of her collar. “Popular wisdom in the capital claims that elves crave domination. All this business of rebellion is a front. Deep down, what all elves really want is to be punished for their wrongs and put to use in service of their true masters.”

Elyon gritted her teeth, caught between caving, proving the orc right, and risking her people with defiance. Roga was watching her with those intelligent gold eyes, clearly expecting a response, so she spoke carefully.

“I won’t presume to tell you how to pathologize it… Everything I’ve done has been to protect my people.” She put the reason up in front of her like a shield. It was so weak that Roga didn’t even deign to argue—out of obvious pity.

“And I am pleased with you, so they will be protected.”

“For now,” Elyon murmured, reminding herself again: _leave nothing to chance._

“For now,” Roga agreed, “but I could see you serving well enough to extend that mercy a few days longer, and a few days longer, maybe forever. You managed to break quite beautifully last night, after all. Several times.”

Elyon felt so utterly helpless there beneath the orc that she needed to do something about it. Something, or she was going to break down sobbing all over again. So, she did the only thing she could think of, nonsensical as it was. Lifting herself up on her elbows, she hesitated so slightly that the movement might have been a feint—and because it read as a feint, Roga was unprepared when Elyon leaned up and kissed her. Short and chaste, between the tusks.

Gratification as those golden eyes blinked in surprise.

Roga recovered with a smile and a hard flick to Elyon’s ear that made her twitch. “You’re ridiculous, elf.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elyon agreed.

There on her back, Elyon held herself together with the knowledge that she had wrong-footed the orc. It was only a moment but battles were won and lost on openings that lasted only a moment. If Elyon could still create those openings, then she was still herself. Even after all the devastation. She could keep moving forward.

When Roga rose to dress for the day, Elyon struggled upright and swung her legs off the edge of the bed. It was hot agony. Every stroke of Roga’s hand throbbed back into her rear with the pressure. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, considering, and decided that the alternative would be less painful—or at the very least less shameful. If she ended up making a sound of pain, she would do it on her feet, not sitting on her spanked backside.

Clenching her jaw, she pushed to her feet. The grunt was small but it drew Roga’s attention from across the tent.

“You’re standing?” the orc said, brows raised in surprise.

“Am I being admonished?” Elyon asked as needles bit into the ruined soles of her feet.

“No.”

She shrugged, fully aware that the effect was not casual. “So… I’m standing,” and gradually losing the ability to feel her feet. That _was_ what Roga had instructed.

“Hm.” Roga’s smile was somewhere between fond and exasperated. “Dress”—She shoved a tunic into Elyon’s chest—“then braid your hair.”

Elyon blinked as her hands closed automatically on the tunic. “But…I thought you didn’t like the way I…” She trailed off before Roga could scold her for questioning orders. A hand touched her neck and she understood.

When it was down, Elyon’s hair covered a good deal. With it braided back, anyone who glanced her way would see Roga’s bitemarks around the collar and on the shell of Elyon’s ear, the imprints of Roga’s fingers on Elyon’s cheeks, and know precisely what all that shouting and moaning had been about the previous night.

“And sit”—Roga punched the tips of her fingers into the tunic and Elyon’s chest—“dumb elf.”

The light shove tipped Elyon back on her burning feet, the backs of her knees hit the bed, and she folded back down. She had her teeth clenched in preparation before her beaten ass hit the furs—which felt for all the world like it was made of porcupine quills—and just managed not to scream.

There was no good way to hold her body. Standing was painful, sitting was painful, and any attempt to arrange herself cross-legged or with her weight resting on one thigh strained something aching and overused between her legs. Eventually, she gave up trying and just silently bore the pain as she raked the comb through her hair and gathered it into a braid.

The tunic was actually Elyon’s size this time, falling to her mid-thigh instead of her shins. Roga had even given her a roughly elf-sized pair of pants—though Elyon suspected that might just have been for the satisfaction of watching as she tried to jimmy the waistband up her battered calves, her bruised thighs, and finally, agonizingly, over her raw ass.

“They fit, I see,” Roga said as Elyon tied the drawstring at the waist, ashamed to find her hands shaking from the pain.

Elyon nodded, not trusting herself to make a sound that wasn’t an undignified whine.

“Do you need fresh bandages for your feet?”

“No, ma’am. They’ll hold.”

“They’ll hold?” Roga repeated, plainly amused, though Elyon wasn’t sure why.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Come then. The road calls.”

Elyon was faintly dismayed when Roga didn’t offer her shoes before they left the tent, but it was alright. She had made sure that the bandages around her feet were secure enough to withstand a day’s walk. Every step might favor her with spears of pain, but she would live.

Following Roga up to her rhino, Elyon expected the orc to produce rope from her saddlebag, but instead, Roga took a handful of Elyon’s tunic and pulled her a few steps closer to the looming animal. This, Elyon did not like at all. On the field, she didn’t fear rhinos. They were massive targets, slow to change directions, easy to evade and slice through. But here with no weapon and her feet too damaged to quickly bear her out of danger, the animal was terrifying.

“Go on,” Roga said.

“Ma’am?”

“Mount up. Unless you wanted a boost, like a toddler.”

Without meaning to, Elyon took a step back—only to encounter Roga’s armored chest, blocking her retreat.

“I can walk, ma’am.”

“Did I ask?”

Elyon opened her mouth, closed it again, and swallowed the urge to argue. Roga had taken mercy on her soldiers. That was all that mattered. Elyon’s fate—even if it was something stupid like being gored by a rhino—didn’t matter if it stretched her master’s mercy. Even just a little longer.

“No, ma’am. Apologies,” she said and stepped up to the rhino.

The beast snorted a great hot breath and turned its giant head toward Elyon in distrust. Given Roga’s military history, Elyon figured that her mount wasn’t keen on the smell of elves. Seven thousand pounds of muscle shifted in agitation.

“Easy, girl.” Roga lay her right hand on the beast’s flank—then her left on Elyon’s shoulder— _“Girls,”_ she amended. “Both of you.”

Elyon invariably clamped up under Roga’s hand, but the touch had the opposite effect on the rhino. Under Roga’s calming hand, the ancient beast grudgingly held still and allowed Elyon close.

Elyon swung into the saddle on muscle memory and settled to absolute agony. The forest stags she was used to riding into battle had nowhere near this creature’s girth—and she had never tried to ride one after an orc took a bare hand to her backside near on a hundred times. The assault Roga had focused between her open legs had left her pelvis sore, her inner thighs overstretched and peppered with bites.

“The front of the hump of the saddle is narrower,” Roga said with a touch of amusement. “Scoot your little ass up to the horn.”

Stoically, Elyon obeyed, gripping the ring at the front of the saddle and using it to nudge her weight forward. The front of the saddle _was_ narrower, though no more comfortable. The ridge of leather was clearly designed to keep a two-hundred-pound orc’s weight settled low in the saddle, where she was unlikely to be thrown. It was not designed as a second seat and the leather peak dug distractingly between Elyon’s legs into her cunt, still sore from the rough coupling.

In a proper sized saddle, Elyon would have used the stirrups to push herself upward and take the pressure off her abused sex. But these stirrups were for Roga, dangling a good foot below Elyon’s bare feet—which were probably too ruined to do her much good anyway.

Leather creaked as Roga mounted and settled in the saddle behind Elyon, her body pressing hot against the elf’s back.

“Keep your hands on the horn,” Roga instructed.

Elyon drew a sharp breath as the general’s body shifted a little more firmly against hers, trapping her between the hard saddle horn and a wall of solid orc. As the shoulders of the saddle dug into her inner thighs, Elyon subconsciously braced one hand behind her, against Roga’s hip, as if to push the orc back—as if she had that kind of strength.

“Hands on the horn,” Roga repeated more sternly, “or I will tie them.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Elyon shifted her hips just slightly, unsuccessfully trying to find a less painful position, and gripped the horn before her.

“Elyon, this is Ylgor.” Roga leaned over Elyon to rub the thick fur on the rhino’s neck. “Ylgor, this is Elyon, who is not as heavy as half the trophies I’ve had you haul, so be nice to her.”

A plodding crunch of underbrush heralded the approach of a second monstrous rhino and Thragor pulled up beside Roga. Hemlock was riding at the front of his saddle again, looking barely better than she had the previous morning. Today, instead of bundling into a cloak, Thragor had clad her in a green dress—flattering but not impractical—and she seemed at least halfway lucid.

“Good morning, General. I hope you slept well.”

His black eyes brushed briefly over Elyon. She lowered her head slightly in shame, though the gaze didn’t linger in lust or mockery. 

“Indeed, I did.” A hand rested lightly on Elyon’s thigh—so casually possessive that Elyon almost would have preferred a forceful grip on her breast or between her legs. At least, a rough hand implied that Elyon was still dangerous enough that she needed forcing. Holding still beneath that gentle hand just made her feel broken.

“I hope your night was good as well, Lieutenant?” Roga said. “The company was satisfactory?”

Hemlock cringed at the words, shaking like a leaf in a gale.

“The company is still recovering, General—but she has been good,” Thragor added. “Nothing but obedient.”

“Good.”

“Lieutenant Magdur says we can start moving.”

“Tell her I want her up front today, with me. Karrok can take up the rear.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

 _Oh, good,_ Elyon thought miserably. _A full day with Magdur_.

“Elyon,” a low voice breathed against her ear, “hands.”

Looking down, Elyon was alarmed to find her own hand—so spindly and small by comparison—had gripped Roga’s wrist when the orc had made to slide that touch further up her slave’s thigh.

“S-sorry,” Elyon said but couldn’t get her fingers to release the orc’s wrist. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re having some trouble with obedience,” Roga said and Elyon’s heart started hammering in panic. What if Roga took this out on the other elves? What if Elyon had just messed up everyth— “Do I need to restrain you?”

The question was such a breathtaking relief that, for a moment, Elyon couldn’t move or speak. _Leave nothing to chance._ She nodded mutely before getting her voice to work. 

“Yes, Master.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We also have more art!!!
> 
> My Photoshop genius friend helped me make these portraits of [Roga](https://ibb.co/Bc04SP6) and [Elyon](https://ibb.co/zh9mstk) (plus bonus: [Shara-Lee](https://ibb.co/RhwGYrH)) and The_Great_Octopus did [this](https://ibb.co/ZgSmCFw) awesome illustration of the bathing scene from Chapter 11.
> 
> I still can’t believe how talented some of you people are but I am living for it!

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed my quarantine scribble. I don’t know where I’m going with this story (if it's even going forward at all) but if people like it, I’ll try to update as I have time.


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